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Touches You

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Diary of a Hit-man is directed by Roy London and adapted to screenplay by Kenneth Pressman from his own play, Insider's Price. It stars Forest Whitaker, John Bedford-Lloyd, Sherilyn Fenn, Seymour Cassel, James Belushi and Sharon Stone.Music is by Michel Colombier and cinematography by Yuri Sokol.Hit-man Dekker is contracted to kill the wife and baby of his latest client, but he starts to seriously question the ethics of the job..."you're your own worst witness"The ingredients for a high end neo-noir piece are all in place here, with the pic at times threatening potency to strike a telling blow, sadly it rounds out as very unfulfilling. Its stage origins are all too obvious, and the blend of quirky and wry humour with the more dramatic core of the story never sits well. Cast also come off as a little awkward, no doubt straining to deliver the goods for their acting coach director.On the plus side for noir fans there's stuff to savour. Pic is driven by a Dekker narration, and the character is in contact with interesting characters. Be it a mime artist, his psychiatrist, a kid in a tumble dryer, a busy body tarty sister or the weasel villain who hires him, the human contact is straight out of noir land. The places he goes are also in keeping, the local bar with neon lighting, the church where "business" is conducted, Jain's (Fenn) apartment, which is a bizarre concoction of scatterbrain living and mummy housewifery, or a peekaboo strip joint. Elsewhere there's an extended session of film where Dekker has double vision, this putting a nice off-kilter vibe on things, while the whole time where the pic takes place in the apartment - with just Dekker and Jain in conflab - holds considerable interest. But then there's the finale, which is so far removed from noir it may make some want to set fire to the TV...Just above average neo-noir, but not one to recommend with any sort of confidence. 6/10

120 minutes of scenes that would be cut if they had a plot.Basically, there is a shadowy hit-man who likes to talk to everybody. He tells his story everywhere he goes.Talk, talk, talk.He even talks to the cops. What a nice talkative hit-man. Oh, boy.Luckily, even though half the city knows he is a hit-man, he can still pull off these hits without anybody catching on. Even when the cops catch him in the middle of a hit and know that he is a hit-man, nobody catches on. What a sneaky guy.I assume that the reason why they turned the original turkey of a play into this turkey of a movie was so the characters could be heard over the endless chants of "What kind of crap is this?" Love Whitaker. Hate everything about this movie.

Forrest Whittaker is superb in this taut thriller, in which he plays a burned-out hit man who is planning his last job. The job, however, is a dirty one even by his standards: he is ordered to murder the wife of a shady businessman and the wife's baby (whom, claims the businessman, is not his child, and a crack baby to boot). Sherilyn Fenn plays the wife masterfully, exhibiting a wide range of emotion from fear to desperation to joy to confusion, all within just a few minutes on camera. James Belushi plays a cynical police detective, while Sharon Stone (in her first post-"Basic Instinct" role) has a small role as Sherilyn's kooky sister, aptly named "Kiki". Instead of taking out Sherilyn and her baby, Whittaker bonds with her and, eventually, turns the tables on her s.o.b. husband. The movie was filmed in Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Ohio, and Sharon, PA, where the producer's studio was located at the time (1991). These industrial locales add a dark mood to this even darker drama, one that is vastly underrated.

This is an excellent movie, Whittaker is so underrated. They rave about the same actors, being so gifted. Whittaker is so powerful, soft spoken, not with mumbling so many actors do. I enjoyed this movie very much. It was very human and touching.Fenn was so good, in a role that could have been wasted on other beautiful actresses.