and tenacity. Minnie Driver is quite good as the woman he's still obsessed with although she was good in GOOD WILL HUNTING, she should have been nominated for this performance , and Alan Arkin and Jeremy Piven were good, as ever, in support. The surprise, however, is Dan Aykroyd. Just when I was prepared to write him off forever, he comes through with a great performance here. The soundtrack is terrific too, avoiding the cliched 80's songs to provide a fresh, and compatible, score.

it deserves 10/10

meaning, anything to fill a certain existential void, an emotional roller-coaster which Cusack has made a career out of conveying. Indeed, Cusack made a name for himself in the 1980s playing wisecracking teenagers who struggle with adulthood, are contemptuous of others and posses an inner wisdom. You might say "Blank" takes these characters and pushes them toward sociopathy.Cusack has always been cool, but here he oozes ultra-cool, ever body motion, mannerism and gesture fine-tuned. The film offers an endless stream of witty dialogue, numerous neat, subtle touches Blank is very picky about where he sits , a killer soundtrack and a hilarious subplot featuring Dan Aykroyd as a fast-talking, overweight hit-man. Aykroyd's attempting to set up a hit-man trade union "Solidarity!" , but Blank's not interested in joining. The duo share a priceless scene in a café, both men with weapons hidden under a table.Bizarrely, "Grosse Pointe" marries at least six genres. It's a high-school reunion movie, an assassin flick, a return-to-small-town movie, a romantic comedy, action film and 1980s teen nostalgia flick. Armitage handles the tropes of all these genres well, but outdoes himself with the film's many action sequences. They're surprisingly well choreographed, particularly an intense fist-fight with famed martial artist Benny Urquidez.Much of the film plays like a 1980s, teen flick. Here Minnie Driver's the object of Blank's affection, she playing the girl Blank abandoned 10 years earlier at a high school dance. Blank's attempting to reconnect with her as a means of escaping what is essentially a stasis borne of nihilism and apathy, a fact which gives the film's eighties nostalgia some touching subtext. Blank wants to mend his childhood, to start over, but the universe won't let him. In the end, it's Driver who embraces Blank's philosophy, though Blank changes a little too. In one scene, holding a baby whilst Queen waffles on the soundtrack "...dares you to change your way of caring...." , Blank learns something about the fragility and preciousness of life. Seconds later he kills a guy and dumps the body in a furnace. Baby steps.The film's romantic climax is rushed and unconvincing, and Minnie Driver irks with the facial bone structure of a caveman. Still, "Grosse Pointe" is some kind of classic, and in a way continues the evolution of the hit-man genre from Yojimbo to Le Samourai to The Professional 1980 to Nikita to Leon to Ghost Dog to Grosse Pointe Blank . Here, Cusack acts as a sort of deconstruction of the Hit-man. No longer is he an angel of death Melville's film , or a mentally damaged human, but a totally self-aware, thoroughly postmodern, neurotic wreck. The film completely autopsies the genre, which will probably lead to a lot of noble, somber, "stable" and "righteous" hit-man movies in the future. Every genre's eventually reset.9/10 – Cult classic. See "High Fidelity" and "Pump Up The Volume".

have attracted a collection of hit men trying to find an excuse to kill him. These include Aykroyd, two federal agents and a freelance Basque hit-man. There is a shoot-out at the end and overall the film has a large body count, but Cusack makes Blank seem like a lovable version of Jason Bourne. The film is something of an ensemble piece with great comic performances from Alan Arkin, Joan Cusack, Jeremy Piven and Aykroyd. The film pokes fun at the loner tough guy hero featured in so many Hollywood movies. At the time of its release the story was a little unusual but Mr and Mrs Smith has since explored similar territory of rich cosmopolitan assassins trying to blend into ordinary American life. Blank spends most of the movie in pursuit of Debi. Will she forgive him? Will he have time to complete his assignment? This is my idea of a great movie. It's funny and clever and the characters are flawed but likable.

small role that her poor acting and unbelievable character which, I guess isn't her fault could be overlooked and placed in the margin. Not her worst performance, but not her best which might be "Beautiful" .Dan Ackroyd was superb, actually presenting us one of the funnier yet darker villains in cinematic history. His delivery of Bible verses while shooting willy-nilly through a target's house? Diabolical! The directing was respectable and the writing was spot-on. Some great dialog between the characters and the story could not be beat. Seriously.The Cusacks? Oh my! John Cusack is a winner in everything he's ever done besides maybe "One Crazy Summer" . This movie is one of his best, almost as memorable as "Say Anything" though that one is flatly unbeatable . Joan Cusack was also pretty cool as a receptionist and her rapport with John is clear and shines in the film. I'm not buying a phone from her, though. And John's sparring with his kickboxing instructor? Those lessons have paid off! Jeremy Piven? Stupendous, as good if not better than his "Chasing Liberty" role. Having starred in 10 films with John Cusack, this is probably their best together.There are so many more praises I could heap on this movie, but I shouldn't have to. If you want to see a funny, quirky and well-crafted tale about a professional hit-man and a high school reunion, this is your film of choice. You might rent "Michelle and Romy", but not only will you not get the hit men, but you'll get a piece of dog doo, as well. So choose wisely.

tender & romantic. Despite these ostensibly impossible personality contradictions, you never once question that his character is real, you can't help but like the guy, & never stop hoping that things work out for him. Pulling this off is a remarkable achievement & Cusack does it brilliantly. He reluctantly accepts a commission that takes him back to his hometown, Grosse Pointe, coincidentally at exactly the same time as his old High School reunion. While there he visits his childhood sweetheart, local DJ Debi Driver , for the first time in 10 years – when in a fit of madness he had ditched her on their prom night to run off & join the army. As neither she nor anyone else had heard anything from him since then, her feelings about this are understandably rather mixed!Blank visits his institutionalised Mum & the family home, which to his great distress is now an ‘Ultimart', & eventually convinces Debi to go with him to the reunion. His reacquaintances with his former schoolmates are very funny & even quite touching, & are sure to strike a chord with anyone who's ever been to one of those things.Meanwhile various other assassins, chief of which is Blank's rival Grocer Ackroyd – brilliant as ever are out to kill him. Their reasons are many & varied – mainly involving an ‘Assassin's union', secret Government operations & a dead dog yes, really! . As you can probably guess, these are not the sort of things that are conducive to a successful High School reunion, & mayhem ensues.‘Grosse Pointe Blank' is extremely funny, full of deadpan, twisted humour - mainly from Cusack, but ably supported by Ackroyd & Arkin. I particularly liked the running gag of Blank's response to the inevitable "what do you do for a living?" question: a completely matter-of-fact "professional killer", which of course not one person takes seriously. I also loved the hilariously neurotic exchanges between Blank & his hounded shrink Arkin , who ends every conversation with "Don't kill anyone!" There's also a lovely little story involving a pen...The film is also a great action flick - it has some brilliantly choreographed & executed gunfight & hand-to-hand fight sequences – in fact some of the best I've ever seen. Cusack looks, or at least is made to look, like a pretty decent athlete himself. The finale is a real tour-de-force, & for me sums up the movie itself: a great gunfight, clever & hilariously funny.This film is wonderful from start to finish – if you haven't done so already, see it now!

asking to use the funny quip - 'they all seem kinda related' - must have been based on a real person. Too sad to be fiction.Minnie [cab] Driver, Joan Cusack and Dan Ackroyd personalise their performances very well. The support cast were excellent too. The music was an oddly enjoyable mix and the fight sequence with the pen was the most realistic and exhausting I'd seen. It was the attention to small detail which swung it in the end though. Cusack's buddy's coke-fuelled, paranoid banter was spot on "Jenny Slater, Jenny Slater" as was the burning the fingers on the furnace, to name just two random details. The effect of this, is that they all add up to a movie which you can enjoy watching many times. And that makes it a rare gem.

Driver again. This dark comedy is heavy on exciting action, suspense, gunfire, laughs, and fun, but it doesn't have not quite enough character development for my taste a bit more on how Martin became accustomed to killing would have been nice . Still, GROSSE POINTE BLANK was one of the best films of 1997 and one of the better comedies of the 1990s. There were rumors of a sequel happening for a while, though the chances of that happening are slim to none. Too bad.