Grosse Pointe Blank - 1997 - DVD

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Grosse Pointe Blank was released in 1997, the year I graduated high school. Currently only months away from my own ten-year reunion, I gleefully embrace Martin Q. Blank (John Cusack), an embittered hit man forced to return to his hometown to complete a job. As a result he's reluctantly required to attend his old high school to observe what Marcella (Joan Cusack) his secretary says is the crux of her reunion: "It was just as if everyone had swelled."

I never saw Grosse Pointe Blank when it was released in 1997. It was serendipitous that I found it as I raided my companion's DVD rack one night. I've had friends who've raved about it for years, but somehow I never got around to watching it, that is until my recent discovery. Broadly speaking, the movie is not spectacular. It's technically (i.e. camera, editing) predictable, and rarely stimulating in its formulaic mode. Rather, it's the script's attitude problem that inspires the movie. Take the explicit action of the lead character, Martin, who's motivated to return to his school to murder not mingle, a perfect picture of sentimentality smashed.

The unsentimental story is highlighted with characters like Martin's best friend from high school, Paul, played by Jeremy Piven. His is a delightfully disillusioned role of self-loathing in a suit. Now he's a real estate broker, an unconvincing house salesman whose youth is over. Even better is Martin's rehashed relationship with high school sweetheart Debi (Minnie Driver), whose life seems to have left off ten years ago in 1987. She lives at home in her old room. Martin recognizes the layout of her furniture and belongings, "it's all the same," he exclaims. Martin left without a trace on the night of their senior prom, so for him life is just how he left it in the '80s. His ego tells him he's better than these people because he's not the same guy he was ten years ago. The sweetest and blackest part yet, he's right; his girlfriend really waited for him all these years after he moved on.

The movie's greatest plus may be the casting of the star himself. John Cusack is from the "brat pack" era where high school life and the teen-age never looked glamorous, rather uncomfortable, and hardly a period of life one would willfully choose to revisit. He had a small part in the angsty Sixteen Candles (1984), and starred in the darker Better Off Dead (1985), and later in the bleakness of The Grifters (1990), so he is not a stranger to detached character roles. Though, by the end of Grosse Pointe Blank I’d say his grudge against those years of his life is insincere, after all he does finally get engaged to his high school sweetheart. In retrospect, high school was easy, stress-free, fun. That’s how I remember it, too. On that note, I am still not pining for my ten year reunion.