The Hit

The script by Peter Prince occasionally errs too much on the side of opacity, but the few revelations that do come are deftly handled. It’s a meditation on death, and in the end, it belongs to Hurt.

A dexterously balanced killer thriller by the idiosyncratic Frears, whose every scene becomes a matter of life and death.

The Hit is something special: thoughtful, perfectly performed and carrying the clear stamp of an extremely interesting director.

Frears displays a complete mastery of the mechanics of a thriller, such that his movie is terrifying even when it pauses for breath. [08 Feb 1985, p.D8]

Eventually, the film, shot on location in Spain by a director with an innate understanding of how to stylize without becoming self-conscious, asks to be seen as a comic but moving meditation on the ways we do, or do not, go gently into that good night. [05 Apr 1985]

Hurt is in good vicious form as the shaded hit man; Stamp once more wears a smile like a halo; and the prospect of approaching death is handled without too much metaphysical puffing and blowing. All in all, a very palpable hit.

The Hit' is a disappointing English underworld movie directed by Stephen Frears. Less a film noir than a film gris, partly because almost all of it takes place in sun- drenched Spain and because the characters talk too much. These guys don't have to use guns. All they have to do is open their mouths and bore each other to death.