ByVal Hull
Contract killing may not be the most stable of jobs with a great retirement plan and health benefits, but it’s hard to deny that the profession has a certain allure. And thanks to the magic of cinema, we can experience the thrills of tracking a target through the scope of a long-barreled rifle without leaving the comfort of our couches. And if that’s something that appeals to you, we’ve put together a list of 10 of the greatest assassin movies.
The thing to keep in mind with assassins is that there’s a fine line between them and spies or mob enforcers. As such, we tried to pick movies that specifically deal with freelance hitmen and assorted assassin societies — if there is some involvement from the mob or three-letter agencies, it’s more superficial and secondary to the main plot.
Without further ado, here are, in no particular order, what we consider to be the best assassin movies of all time:
Now that we have the full list, let’s look at each movie individually to help you figure out which of these will be right up your alley.
Much like The Matrix back in 1999, John Wick is a movie that revitalized Keanu Reeves’ career. No longer a “whoa dude” or even a time-slowing martial artist, the John Wick Keanu is supremely stoic and can teach SEAL Team Six a thing or two about using firearms. The movie also helped the entire action genre by pushing it away from shaky cams and incessant jump cuts towards a saner style where we the viewers can actually see the cool action as it happens.
John Wick starts like your run-of-the-mill revenge story where some disrespectful punks mess with an unassuming guy but get more than they bargained for. In this particular case, they steal his car and kill his dog. Only it’s later revealed that the punks are connected to a massive crime syndicate, and when their superiors learn of what they’ve done and to whom, they excrete enough bricks to build a castle. And this is where things get interesting. Besides its top-notch action, John Wick also offers a layer of mythology and creates a world where underneath its surface secret societies of assassins run the show. And John Wick, the middle-aged sad sack missing a car and mourning his dog, is the retired legend of that scene.
Upon its release, John Wick caught the world by storm and produced a number of sequels and spin-offs. The quality of those can be debated, but if you’re looking for more assassin action seasoned by some deep lore, chances are you’ll enjoy them as well.
When you ask the Coen brothers to adapt a Cormac McCarthy novel into a movie, you’re pretty much guaranteed something spectacular. When you add a cast starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, you get a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Picture (along with three others for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay). This alone should be enough to make you want to see No Country For Old Men.
If it isn’t, then perhaps you’ll be enticed by the plot that offers two hours of tense cat-and-mouse action, characters of dubious and at times unfathomable morals on both sides, and a persistent theme of fate and the fleeting nature of time. You add to this some captivating visuals oozing with style in every frame, a modern-day Western setting, and an absolutely outstanding performance from Javier Bardem as the ruthless assassin Anton Chigurh and you get the kind of movie that will have you glued to your seat.
Hired killers are fun to observe from the distance of the silver screen. They’re considerably less fun when they’re sitting in the backseat of your cab, forcing you to drive around town as they ramp up their body count. Which is exactly the premise of Collateral. Jamie Foxx plays the driver in this scenario, with Tom Cruise acting as the hitman.
Say what you will about Cruise’s personal beliefs, but above all else, he’s an outstanding actor known for giving each part his all. In a sense, he’s kind of like Nicolas Cage but with a better agent. You can easily believe him as this ruthless killer who remains charismatic and personable as he shoots people without hesitation.
Opposite him is Jamie Foxx, who gets dragged into this mess, and with every move and decision, he digs himself deeper into the pit of crime and murder. His attempts to outthink and outplay Cruise’s character as he outwardly maintains the façade of helping him lead to some very tense scenes and produce fantastic acting from both stars.
Léon: The Professional is the movie that put Natalie Portman on the map. Child actors are notoriously hard to work with, and getting a decent performance out of them is essentially a roll of the dice. Even so, the 13-year-old Portman in her big screen debut managed to deliver a performance worthy of a veteran actor.
When her entire family is killed, Portman’s character is saved by her mild-mannered neighbor portrayed by Jean Reno, who turns out to be a high-class hitman. As the two live together, the grizzled old hitman has to remember what it’s like to coexist with someone. At the same time, the young girl tries to get over her loss by learning his trade in order to get revenge on the men who killed her family.
The men, led by Gary Oldman in another standout performance of an illustrious career, aren’t about to just sit there and let a kid and her aging mentor wipe them out, which leads to some fantastic action scenes. Add to that a soundtrack by Sting, and you’ve got yourself a movie that’s hard to forget. Just stay away from the extended cut if you want to avoid some mighty uncomfortable, even for a movie about juvenile assassins, scenes.
Let’s get one thing straight right away. Hitman is in no way a “greatest movie of all time.” However, if we compare it against other video game adaptations, then the comparison becomes much more favorable, and Hitman starts looking like a proper masterpiece.
Hitman tells the story of Agent 47, a genetically engineered assassin famous for his baldness and the bar code on the back of his head. The video game series this movie is based on started back in 2000 and is still going strong to this day. The series is notable for its social stealth systems, as opposed to the more usual skulking in the shadows, and an overarching plot packed to the brim with conspiracies and secret societies.
The movie attempts to translate all that to the big screen while making things more palatable to the wider audience. For the most part, it even succeeds in doing so. The real standout here, however, is Agent 47 himself, portrayed by none other than Raylan Givens himself – Timothy Olyphant. The movie is worth watching just for the chance to see Olyphant running around for an hour and a half completely bald.
Assassins killing unsuspecting victims is fun and all, but when you pit trained assassins against other assassins is when things get really exciting. Kill Bill, which was released in two parts, can be considered a transitory movie for its director/writer Quentin Tarantino. It sits somewhere between his early projects like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and his later movies like Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained.
Kill Bill tells the story of a former assassin (portrayed by Uma Thurman) known only as The Bride. Throughout the movies, she methodically hunts down her team for betraying her, crashing her wedding, killing everyone there, and leaving her for dead. In a way, Kill Bill is a love letter to old martial arts movies. It celebrates them with great production values, non-stop high-octane action, and a gratuitous amount of blood and assorted dismemberment.
What’s also amusing, is that in a way, Kill Bill was foreshadowed all the way back in Pulp Fiction, where Uma Thurman’s character describes a failed TV show pilot she starred in, and that show’s characters bear a striking resemblance to those we see in Kill Bill.
These days, people often complain about there not being any good movies to watch. Which can be hard to argue with if you’re someone who likes neither superheroes nor convoluted indie narratives. But while it can definitely be hard to find a good modern movie, it’s not impossible, and Bullet Train proves it.
The movie’s title is a play on words, meaning both an actual bullet train (also known as Shinkansen) where most of the action takes place, and a more metaphorical meaning of the words on account of the higher than average concentration of assassins on board. Based on a Japanese novel, Bullet Train stars an ensemble cast headlined by Brad Pitt who plays an operative codenamed Ladybug. Convinced he’s cursed with bad luck and tired of all the death and destruction that comes with his occupation, he picks up what he thinks is an easy job by filling in for another operative. This places him on a train packed with assassins, sending his hopes for a simple peaceful mission off a cliff.
Bullet Train’s basic setup belies its true greatness. The movie absolutely shines in its sharp witty dialogue, action scenes that use the environment in a very Jackie Chan way, and great attention to detail. The movie doesn’t just throw cool but meaningless scenes at us. It understands the need for setup, and so just about every element in it is there for a reason. Basically, this is Chekhov’s Gun the movie.
And while Brad Pitt is the biggest name among the cast, the rest of it should not be underestimated, as each of the assassins on board has a distinct personality, great lines, and a lot of character. One of them is played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson who is rumored to be the next James Bond. And if he can bring the same level of craft to that role as he did in Bullet Train, we’re all for it. Our only regret is that Andrew Koji, who you may know as Ah Sahm in the Warrior TV show, didn’t get enough opportunities to flex his martial arts skills here.
You know how if you’re watching a TV show, and it’s been going for a few seasons, there’s a good chance that one of its episodes will revolve around the characters attending a high school reunion or a homecoming of some sort? This reunion will serve as the backdrop for some shenanigans related to the show’s overall plot while the characters have to deal with their past catching up with them. As a general rule, these episodes tend to be fun standouts for whatever show does them.
Grosse Pointe Blank is essentially the progenitor of this kind of episode. In it, John Cusack plays a hitman who’s beginning to develop a conscience. To clear his head, he attends his high-school reunion where he runs into his old flame. Cusack’s character then has to juggle attending the reunion to get the girl with his new assignment, opportunistic competition trying to get rid of him, federal agents, and an overzealous recruiter for a so-called Assassin’s Union.
An assassin who hunts unsuspecting targets is cool. An assassin who hunts other assassins is cooler. But the ultimate assassin takes a step even further and goes after the most elusive target of them all – himself.
This is essentially the basic premise behind Looper. In the not-so-distant future, whenever the mob needs to dispose of someone, they utilize time travel to send their targets back to the past. When they’re killed there, the mob doesn’t have to worry about any evidence, paper trails, or bodies being discovered. But later, in order to avoid any sort of temporal paradoxes, the older version of the hitman needs to go back to the past to get killed by his younger self to “close the loop.”
The younger version of our hitman is portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, while the older one is played by Bruce Willis. The gripping battle between the two is further complicated by assorted timey wimey stuff and conflicting personal interests. Aside from just being a great movie, Looper is notable as one of the last movies where Bruce Willis actually gave it his all and had the presence of mind to deliver a good performance. And Bruce Willis who gives a damn is a force to be reckoned with.
The Mechanic is proof that we as a society found the assassin craft to be alluring even back in the ’70s. It’s a movie from a different age, but it still has all the staples of a classic assassin movie – meticulous attention to detail, old loners who still long for some form of human connection, secret societies that seemingly exist purely to eventually turn on themselves. It’s all there. Plus, being a movie from the ’70s, it has a different pace compared to the more modern movies, which can feel refreshing. And who can say no to the unrivaled badassness of the one and only Charles Bronson?
But, if a movie this old feels a bit too dated for you, you can instead experience it through a significantly more recent remake starring Jason Statham. The remake goes heavier on the action, but it still tells the same tale of generational shifts, surprising twists, and considerably less surprising betrayals.
Which assassin movies are your favorite? Do you think we missed any good entries that could go on this list? Feel free to let us know.
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