‘The Big Hit’: Stealing Back From Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino is widely considered one of the most important and influential filmmakers of the 1990s (many would go so far as to say he is the most important and influential filmmaker of the decade), yet it’s hard to make the case for him as a true original. That’s fair; one of his signatures, and what wins him a place in the pantheon of post-modern cinema, is his liberal and overt approach to borrowing from different eras of filmmaking. His work bears traces of the intertextuality and looseness of the French New Wave, the violence and grit of the New Hollywood of the 1970s, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the long history of exploitation cinema. Few influences loom as large on his career as Hong Kong cinema: perhaps the most cited examples are the Bride’s yellow tracksuit in Kill Bill: Volume 1, and the plot of his debut film Reservoir Dogs. The first one comes from the incomplete Bruce Lee film Game of Death; the second one from Ringo Lam’s City on Fire.

It’s an influence that, to Tarantino’s credit, he has made an effort to pay back, pushing MTV to give Jackie Chan a lifetime achievement award and his distributor to buy the American rights to the films of Wong Kar-wai. A quick overview of Hong Kong cinema is enough to see what so excited Tarantino in the first place. By the time he was getting ready to make his breakthrough first feature, Hong Kong had already become home to one the most impressive and zestful (and violent) popular cinemas in the world, as film historian David Bordwell notes in his book-length survey of the industry Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (my source for the quotes and claims in this book, including the above tidbits regarding Chan and Wong). Though small in territory and population, Hong Kong produced films that were popular throughout East Asia and so could be exported profitably, thus encouraging mass production and higher production values. The Bruce Lee kung-fu dramas and Jackie Chan comedies offer a taste of the skill and energy typical in Hong Kong action but are only the tip of the iceberg.

By the start of the 1990s, Hong Kong filmmakers had started to make inroads in Hollywood, independently of Tarantino’s support. Director John Woo and producer Terence Chang orchestrated Woo’s entry into the American film industry. After the Hong Kong success of A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled, Woo came to direct Jean-Claude Van Damme in Universal’s Hard Target, Christian Slater and John Travolta in 20th Century Fox’s Broken Arrow, and Nicolas Cage and Travolta again in Paramount’s Face/Off. Other Hong Kong veterans would follow suit. Ringo Lam made his own Van Damme film, Maximum Risk, in 1996. Tsui Hark, whose work as director and producer, as Planet Hong Kong notes, led many to call him the Steven Spielberg of Hong Kong, made Double Team and Knock Off (both starring Van Damme again). Stanley Tong, who directed the third and fourth installments of Jackie Chan’s Police Story series, would also direct Chan in the New York set Rumble in the Bronx and later Leslie Nielsen in the Disney comedy Mr. Magoo.

But Hong Kong directors weren’t the only thing American producers were looking for in an action picture in the late nineties. The success of Tarantino’s films spawned many imitators. Films like Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, The Boondock Saints, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Grosse Pointe Blank either borrowed Tarantino’s criminal protagonists and convoluted narratives or aspired to his dark sense of humor, violence, and pop culture savvy dialogue, with mixed results.

Both trends would collide in 1998’s The Big Hit. The script, by Ben Ramsey (whom Roger Ebert describes in his review as “an American who has apparently done as much time in the video stores as Quentin Tarantino.”), stars a group of career hitmen, and involves a botched kidnapping and plenty of mix-ups that lend themselves easily to the shedding of blood and bullets. The director would be Kirk Wong, perhaps better known for Crime Story, starring Jackie Chan, and Gunmen, a riff on Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables.

Mark Wahlberg, fresh off Boogie Nights but not yet shedding his rapper persona (he contributes a song for the film’s closing credits) stars as Melvin Smiley, a 20-something hitman with a sad propensity for letting people walk all over him. He is engaged to be married to Pam (Christina Applegate) and is also dating Chantel (Lela Rochon) but seems to take no pleasure in his two-timing. Both women take his money shamelessly and capriciously: Pam to pay off her parent’s debts, Chantel to finance a life of luxury that she in turn enjoys with another man.

Mel’s colleagues and supposed friends don’t treat him much better. In the film’s opening action sequence, Mel, Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips), Crunch (Bokeem Woodbine), and Vince (Antonio Sabàto Jr.) are hired to take down a crime boss. But after all the posing and preparation, Mel’s buddies ditch all the work on his shoulders. Mel walks guns blazing into the luxury suite, proficiently shooting down multiple goons, while Cisco, Crunch and Vince lay back and ignore his calls for backup. To add insult to injury, Cisco claims the $25,000 bonus for killing the target. Mel guns the crime boss down, but when the crew reports to their boss Paris (Avery Brooks), Cisco says that the man was still alive. A flashback shows Cisco shooting the corpse while Crunch and Vince cheer him on.

A case could be made for thematic continuity between Crime Story and The Big Hit. Though they follow characters on opposite sides of the law, both deal with men in violent professions whose relationship deteriorates due to greed and betrayal. Yet both films also serve as examples of Wong’s range, as they address the idea in very different ways. Based on a real- life event, Crime Story is unusually serious and dramatic for a Jackie Chan vehicle of the time. The Big Hit not only plays as a straight comedy but is practically a cartoon. The opening mission offers a taste of its cute logic: not content with having Mel’s crew chilling while he does all the work, the film shows Cisco and Vince sharing a cup of coffee while the shooting happens just next door.

Things only grow more absurd as the film’s plot properly kicks in. In desperate need of money, Mel joins Cisco and Crunch in a side job, of which Paris is initially unaware. They kidnap private school student Keiko Nishi (China Chow), hoping to extract a $1 million ransom from her father, Japanese electronics magnate Jiro Nishi (Sab Shimono). But there are two things they didn’t count on. The first one: Nishi is broke, having spent his money on a film vanity project. The second: he and Paris are close friends, and the crew’s boss is Keiko’s godfather.

Further complicating things is a visit from Pam’s very Jewish parents: Jeanne (Lainie Kazan), a plastic surgery enthusiast who can’t accept her daughter marrying a goy (Mel’s Catholic), and Morton (Elliott Gould) a downbeat alcoholic who keeps trying to sneak booze into his bottle of prune juice. The comic misunderstandings pile up. Mel keeps trying to hide the bound-up Keiko from his would-be family, and in addition to the many violent men involved in the plot, Mel is accosted by a squeaky-voiced video store employee (Danny Smith) demanding he return a copy of King Kong Lives. The clerk is not the only character with a gimmick or who is taken to ridiculous extremes by their actor. Crunch has just discovered the joys of masturbation, so is frequently shown exercising his right hand or talking cute with it. Brooks plays Paris behind a perpetual malicious grin. There’s also Gump (Robin Dunne), a clumsy sidekick with a speech impediment who gets a tongue twister of a speech based on the rhythm of the phrase “trace- buster”. Yet it’s Phillips as Cisco who best captures the film’s howling, manic energy.

The Big Hit’s jokes may fall flat or not age all too well, yet they always feel like part of a commitment to communicate characterization and plot developments visually. Jiro’s bankruptcy is informed through a fun choreography of movers repossessing his furniture (by the end there’s not even a chair he can sit down on), while the ransom call interrupts his operatic attempts at ritual suicide. Mel is shown drowning his sorrows, not in alcohol, but in antacid.

The Big Hit is quite busy for a film that barely crosses the 90-minute mark. Perhaps inevitably, plot lines are left dangling and key character development is omitted. But is this necessarily a bad thing? When compared to its Hollywood counterpart, Hong Kong action has historically made less emphasis on character development and psychological change. Rather than an overarching narrative, its films are more concerned with energetic sequences than with the story that ties them together. The Big Hit’s Mel gets very simple characterization, which is even articulated explicitly by him in what feels like a clumsy concession to narrative clarity. But his people-pleasing plays very little into the film’s busyness.

Other elements of the film are not even addressed. In the time Mel and Keiko spend together, a romance of sorts blooms, but the film practically jumps from her trying to escape to her wholly in love with Mel. Their flirtation is largely played as a joke: their hands intimately touch while they both try to stuff a chicken, and both come off as silly trying to talk cute without ditching the topic of poultry (“You know, it’s kind of sad that in order to feed us something so young and in the prime of its life has to die” is Mel’s attempt at profundity). Keiko’s sudden turn is somewhat uncomfortable, and the film could be accused of trivializing and even romanticizing violence against women. Yet her underexplored role doesn’t play as a desperate attempt at provocation or shock, but as a concession to action and incident. If The Big Hit finds little to do with Keiko, it’s maybe because her character doesn’t lend herself that much to the comedy that runs through the film.

The busyness of Hong Kong cinema can be partially explained by its tradition of midnight shows: promotional screenings meant to generate word of mouth or even encourage filmmakers to recut films before their proper release. Bordwell quotes a description of the environment by Wong himself: “If they [the audience] see something they don’t like, they’ll boo and scream at you knowing that you’re the director.” Filmmakers responded by making fast paced films that audiences would hardly find boring.

One could argue that, despite its Hong Kong director, The Big Hit remains a distinctly American product. Though made with the support of John Woo and Terence Chang, who are credited as executive producers, the film’s main departments (editing, cinematography, music) are headed by Hollywood professionals. The Big Hit echoes not only Tarantino’s films, but also popular slacker comedies of the time like Wayne’s World and Mallrats. The soundtrack is even an eclectic mix of late-nineties alternative rock: a song by Mexican band Molotov, a ska cover of Joe Jackson’s “I’m the Man” and ballads that awkwardly try to play up Mel and Keiko’s romance.

The Big Hit was moderately successful, but not (pun intended) a big hit. It grossed little more than twice its $13 million budget and received mixed reviews by critics. What’s striking about some of its more negative reviews is how well they capture the spirit of the film. Still somewhat missing the point, Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle wrote: “more aptly titled The Big Miss, this grade-Z action parody looks like a second-rate John Woo cast-off”. In a one-star review, Roger Ebert took issue with the film’s meanness: “You would have to be seriously alienated from normal human values and be nursing a deep-seated anger against movies that make you think even a little, but you could laugh.” Danny Leigh of Sight and Sound called it a “vacant and ill-conceived film.” Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times called it “that rarest of all genre hybrids, the screwball-romantic-action-situation-black comedy. Rare for good reason. Who’d want to see a thing like that?”

To that I can only say: “Me!” Does The Big Hit play like a parody of an action film? Yes. Is it vacant? Definitely. It’s not a movie you have to think about, but my enjoyment doesn’t mean I nurse “a deep-seated anger against movies that make you think even a little.” Some of the negative reviews of The Big Hit strike me, not only as the typical snobbery one (often wrongly) associates with film critics, but an unwillingness to engage with the conventions of a well-established foreign cinema. The cruelty that Ebert objected to, the tonal shifts that Mathews criticized, are not bugs but part of the spirit and tradition of Hong Kong action, and what makes so many of its best films delightful. The Big Hit might have been greenlit as an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Tarantino, but by putting a proven Hong Kong director at the wheel, the result feels not like a copy, but like the real deal.

There’s nothing forced about its more shocking violence or its heightened comedy. The Big Hit inhabits violence and jarring shifts of tone and dynamism with ease and confidence. A scene where Mel carries a trash bag with human remains, another one where Chantel looks inside the bag and says “He’s kinda cute,” or the beats of Mel shooting Keiko’s limo driver and asshole boyfriend with little to no provocation don’t feel out of place. They coexist comfortably with a cutesy visual gag where Melvin’s neighbors all come out with lawnmowers in a prettily choreographed ritual of suburban life and with the shameless piss joke that gives its title to Jiro Nishi’s film. Keiko can mock the spelling and grammar of the ransom note while his captors hold a gun to her face. Morton ranting about his wife and then throwing up is of a piece with the lead up to a dramatic shoot-out. And the climactic fight between Mel and Cisco can be interrupted by a poster congratulating “straight-jackin” enthusiast Crunch as the number one customer of the video store’s adult section.

They feel part of a whole because Wong uses the style of the film to create a world that is bright, colorful, never entirely real. The shoot-out at the beginning resorts to many of the tricks popularized by Woo in his earlier films: bright lights, fast rhythmic cutting, slow motion, wide- angle lenses. Savlov wasn’t wrong when he said that “Phillips, Woodbine, Brooks, and all the rest of Wahlberg’s crew turn their acting up to ‘11’ and then rip the knobs off.” The production design manages a comparable degree of exaggeration.

Hollywood grew tired of Hong Kong directors by the end of the ‘90s. John Woo’s American career fizzled with the mixed reception of Mission: Impossible 2, Windtalkers, and Paycheck. Both of Tsui Hark’s Van Damme films were panned by critics and didn’t make much of an impression at the box-office. Both Woo and Tsui fared better when they returned to the Chinese film industry. Kirk Wong’s career post-The Big Hit wouldn’t be as illustrious, he would never direct another major film in either Hollywood or China.

There’s a little irony in Quentin Tarantino emerging as the biggest beneficiary of Hollywood’s infatuation with Hong Kong cinema. Perhaps Tarantino stole the attention of which Hong Kong filmmakers were more deserving. The Big Hit might not be a great movie, it might not be better than Tarantino’s films of the era, or even rank high among the films that he inspired. But it has an energy and vitality you rarely see in a Hollywood product, and it marks a rare case when a Hong Kong director had a chance to build upon what he borrowed. Tarantino stole (with skill and ingenuity, it’s worth noting) from Hong Kong, and The Big Hit, for a moment, stole back from him. Wong described a typical Hong Kong film as one “that tries very hard to please the audience all the time.” With its twisty plot and its chaotic mix of violence and vulgar comedy, I can’t think of a more fitting description for The Big Hit.