These 'professionals' couldn't shoot their way out of a paper bag
Hitmen are an essential part of the action thriller formula: Good guy tries to stop bad guy, bad guy puts out a hit on good guy, good guy dispatches the goon before the final confrontation with bad guy.
That’s the plot of basically every James Bond movie, right? Occasionally, you get a play on that formula where the assassin is the protagonist, like in John Wick. But for the most part, assassins in film are portrayed as serious, competent people of whom you should actually be afraid. But not everyone is always suited for the work they do. Sometimes, people are just bad at their jobs, and hitmen are no exception. You’d think that there would be a basic degree of competence required when dealing with a job that has such high stakes, but, as these characters demonstrate, you’d be wrong. Whether they’re taking out the wrong targets, shooting people accidentally, or just not thinking about the consequences of their actions, these profoundly unserious hitmen defy the silent, deadly killer trope. To celebrate the release of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man—which offers a unique take on why Glen Powell’s Gary Johnson is not a good killer—we’ve rounded up nine hitmen, or hitman teams, in film that buck the stereotype. We also tossed in a bonus pick from The Simpsons, because it was simply too good not to include. Vincent Vega - Pulp Fiction Getting shot just as you’re leaving the bathroom is an undignified way to die in general, but it stings a lot more when you’re supposed to be a professional hitman. Based on Vincent Vega’s actions throughout Pulp Fiction, it’s a wonder he made it that far in his career at all. Throughout the film, Vincent is oddly careless about gun safety. He shoots Marvin in the face by accident, which should be enough to get him booted from the Professional Assassins Guild or whatever other organizing body takes care of workplace safety complaints and HR issues for contract killers. When you’re that sloppy, you make the whole profession look bad. It’s not much of a surprise that his carelessness—he left his gun just sitting on a counter while he went to use the bathroom, giving Butch the opportunity to take it and shoot him—is what gets him killed in the end. Ray - In Bruges Some people just aren’t cut out for the hitman life, and Ray is one of them. He fucked up his very first job, and he fucked it up bad—he was supposed to kill a priest, but he ended up killing a child, too. That, according to his boss, Harry , is unforgivable. But Ray can’t live with the guilt, either. Ray tries to kill himself; Harry tries to have him killed. None of it sticks. You almost feel bad for Ray until you remember—oh wait, this guy is a hitman, and he couldn’t even do his job correctly. Gary Johnson - Hit Man Gary Johnson isn’t quite like the other hitmen on this list; he’s not actually a hitman at all. He’s a college professor working undercover for the police, setting up sting operations where he just pretends to be a hitman in order to entrap would-be criminals. It’s a fun set-up for a movie, but if you’re not planning to follow through on the work you’ve been contracted to do, you’re probably not very good at your job. Joe Mentalino - Dumb And Dumber Look, it’s easy enough to understand, if not exactly condone, the desire of “Mental” to immediately rub out Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne when he’s picked up by them as a hitchhiker in the course of their cross-country journey to Aspen. There are few fates on Earth more top-of-the-charts irritating than being sandwiched between this pair in a dog-shaped truck hurtling down the interstate, while they bicker or bellow their version of “Mockingbird” directly into your ears. It would take inhuman patience just to endure being in their company for more than a couple of minutes. But still, even after uncovering that these two are just a pair of rubes, Mental really should have showed a bit more due diligence regarding the best practices of professional hitmen. We’re talking about rules like: Hey, don’t leave your food unattended with the people you’re planning to assassinate. It’s that little lapse that costs Mental his life, when the hapless pair unknowingly exploits his ulcer with hot peppers and then shoves a handful of rat poison down his throat. A consummate professional would have known better than to let his guard down, even when dealing with a pair of idiots. Mental quickly pays the price for his carelessness. Gaear Grimsrud - Fargo Gaear Grimsrud is actually a hell of a lot more ruthlessly professional than his partner, Carl Showalter . When you’ve got a kidnapped woman in the trunk of your car and a suspicious police officer standing at your car window, you need to assuage that cop’s worries and get them to move on without incident. Carl fails spectacularly at this mission, trying to bribe the trooper with a paltry $50. That only makes the cop more suspicious, and, by this point, Gaear has had enough of Carl’s incompetence and quickly and efficiently shoots the officer right there on the side of the road. You can’t really blame Gaear for getting fed up with Carl’s bumbling buffoonery, but his rash action causes a chain reaction: Two passersby witness the incident, so Gaear has to kill them, too, and suddenly Gaear and Carl’s crimes have escalated from simple kidnapping to triple murder. Whoa daddy, indeed. Shawn, Derrick, and Shane - I, Tonya Derrick Smith and Shane Stant were never supposed to kill Nancy Kerrigan , but they were trying to injure her, which they did by... hitting her in the knee with a baton. There are layers upon layers of incompetence here: Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly told the FBI that they never intended to physically hurt Nancy—they just wanted to freak her out with a death threat. They lay the blame for the assault at the feet of Shawn Eckardt , whom they hired to mail the threat. Shawn, in turn, hired Shane and Derrick to attack Nancy, because he thought that would bolster his “bodyguard” business that didn’t actually exist. That’s a stupid enough plan on its own, but when your own ceaseless bragging causes the FBI to arrest you because you just can’t stop telling people about what you did, that’s an all-time fuck-up. Tony and Joey - Midnight Run The particular indignity of these two clowns is that they work for a mob boss. They should, by all rights, be the best hitmen in the game. And yet. And yet. The Duke slips through their fingers at every turn. The history of the mob is filled with legendarily competent hitmen: There’s Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, who claims to have killed Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, allegedly responsible for planning the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the various criminals of Murder, Inc., a group of enforcers for the National Crime Syndicate. Tony and Joey are fictional, but if they were real, they would be remembered with the same reverence as Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski. Which is to say: they’d be laughed out of the room for even suggesting they were affiliated with the mob. After all, no one would believe that two mafia hitmen couldn’t manage to take out a simple accountant despite having multiple opportunities to do so. Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis - The Grand Budapest Hotel In Dmitri’s defense, he’s not exactly what you would call a trained hitman. Indeed, he typically has no real need to be one himself, not when he employs the services of the genuinely terrifying J. G. Jopling to stalk and murder the family members of servants, or disapproving local lawyers. Suffice to say, he probably wasn’t expecting to get thrust into the role, but when Zero manages to use the element of surprise to shove Jopling to his death from an icy cliff, Dmitri has no choice but to get his own hands dirty for once. And uh, it doesn’t go particularly well. Dmitri can cut a menacing figure when he’s stalking Agatha , but when the chips are down he simply reverts to grabbing for his ankle gun and firing in wildly ineffectual fashion, inadvertently kicking off a massive firefight between confused soldiers above the lobby of the titular hotel. As he might have put it himself, after negligently realizing that Boy With Apple was missing from his parlor after more than two weeks: “What’s the meaning of this shit?!?” Burke and Stokes - Death To Smoochy They got the wrong rhino. That’s the most distilled version of what happens when TV exec Marion Frank Stokes and talent agent Burke Bennett plot to kill children’s TV host Sheldon Mopes , a.k.a Smoochy the Rhino. The people they hired were supposed to kill Smoochy; they killed Moochy instead. After that spectacular failure, they follow it up by hiring a children’s entertainer named Buggy Ding Dong to take out Smoochy. Clearly, Buggy Ding Dong will succeed where the other guys failed. Except, of course he botches it, because they entrusted a high-stakes job to someone who willingly goes by the name Buggy Ding Dong. Honestly, this one is on them. Bonus: Fernando Vidal - The Simpsons Mr. Burns assures us that Fernando Vidal is “the world’s most devious assassin” when he leafs through his Rolodex to find someone to take out Grandpa Simpson in pursuit of the Hellfish Bonanza, but we should keep in mind that this is the same nuclear plant owner who believes Al Jolson and Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown are still alive. Which is to say, his estimation of competency is often questionable at best. With that said, Vidal’s methods do appear to be pretty professional, at least at first. His attempt to poison Grandpa Simpson is foiled only by the addled Grandpa stuffing the wrong bedside object into his mouth, in a scheme that could easily have succeeded. After that, though, Vidal’s focus seems to quickly unravel, culminating in an assassination attempt that is “as intricate and precise as a well-played game of chess.” The results of that, you should just watch for yourself. All in all, the most damage that Vidal wreaks is actually in verbal form, with his savage reference to former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry’s scandalous crack cocaine habit.
The Family Vincent Schiavelli Jeff Gillooly Murder Inc. Jen Lennon Dmitri Desgoffe Saoirse Ronan Sebastian Stan Derrick Mafia Comedy Films Carl Showalter Hitman Peter Stormare J. G. Jopling Willem Dafoe Harry Dunne Tonya Derrick Smith Jopling Ray Marion Frank Stokes Tonya Harding Richard Linklater Fernando Vidal Agatha Buggy Ding Dong Glen Powell Grandpa Simpson John Wick Marvin Tony Revolori Nancy Kerrigan Charles Grodin Jack Mcgurn Paul Walter Hauser Anthony Reynolds Jim Vorel John Travolta Frank Burns Gary Johnson Colin Farrell Shane Stant Margot Robbie Steve Buscemi Burke Bennett Jimmy Hoffa Edward Norton Rise: Blood Hunter Michael Rispoli Sheldon Mopes Kuklinski Ricky Russert Jon Stewart Vincent Vega The A.V. Club
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