Assassination movies
 

What are your favorites? I'm particularly, but not necessarily, looking for more realistic ones (i.e. Day of the Jackle - honestly, never seen the whole movie but the book is awesome). Give me some flicks about professional hitmen.

Re: Assassination movies
 

There was this film from the 70s with Charleton Heston called Two Minute Warning that was pretty bad and didn't really make much of tension leading up to a sniper popping off people at the Super Bowl in LA.

linkage

Re: Assassination movies
 

...um...I was looking for good movies.

Re: Assassination movies
 

It's good in a bad way. sort of...I always enjoyed it.

There is The Manchurian Canidate if you've never seen that one, which I assume you might have. I'd recommend both the remake and the original, though I'm probably in the minority in recommending the remake.

Fallen Angels, the film by Wong Kar-Wai, is pretty good too.

And of course, there is always Leon and Le Femme Nikita.

Thats all I can think of at the moment. Enough procrastinating for me at the moment. back to work.

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I've never seen La Femme Nikita? Is it really good, or campy-good?

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of course: Léon

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Does Taxi Driver count? >.<

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ASSASSINATION
-The Parallax View is right up your alley.

-The Dead Zone gets a bad rap i think. Too many people laugh AT Walken and don't realize that it's actually a good Cronenberg movie. Also an awesome role for Martin Sheen if you've seen a single episode of The West Wing.

-In the Line of Fire, if you like Wolfgang Petersen and/or Clint Eastwood.

-Also, it's not so much an assassination movie but more of a spy movie.. but it's a pretty realistic take and it's a pretty great movie (and it has an animal in the name a la jackal): Three Days of the Condor

HITMAN
-Collateral
-Grosse Point Blank
-The Killer
-The Matador

Special Mentions
-if you can find it, there's an Italian movie called No Way Out AKA Tony Arzenta, starring Alain Delon (no, not the Kevin Costner movie). That's probably the absolute most badass hitman movie I've seen in years.

-another hard-to-find is this movie starring Yul Brenner called Death Rage. If you're at all a fan of Yul Brenner (Westworld, Magnificent Seven), there ain't much better than seeing him as a cold-hearted ruthless hitman out for revenge.

-The Killers: There's both a 40s film noir and a 70s Don Siegel version of this Hemingway story (both are available through Criterion and both are good). The 70s version in particular though, has Ronald Reagan playing the bad guy, slapping around Angie Dickinson. Plus lee Marvin and Clu Gulagher are the hitmen. I know, right!?

-Le Samourai. Also on criterion DVD. Alain Delon plays a hitman in this one too, but this time it's french. He doesn't say very much though so there's not too many subtitles to read.

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What about 'The Professional' with Natalie Portman in it when she's 13 or something? The french guy in that movie rules - and I remember the movie itself being ace.

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the professional of course.

Man Bites Dog counts? I guess it does.

Scarface.

Re: Assassination movies
 

Man Bites Dog is hilarious. Love that movie.

Re: Assassination movies
 

The Day of The Jackal without a doubt. The original of course, not the remake.

Also a french film called Le Professionel is awesome, with Jean-Paul Belmondo. If it is available dubbed or with sub-titles, watch it!

Nikita is great. Again, this is based on a french film called La Femme Nikita which tends to be better than the remake. Not kitch at all. Nothing like the TV series either.

Leon is t3h sh1tz! Jean Reno...mmmm... one of his best roles.

Re: Assassination movies
 

Luke - The Professional was the US title of Léon if I'm not mistaken.

I thought Nikita (the original French movie based on La Femme Nikita, the TV series) was first class - and the Hollywood remake, The Assassin, was also reasonably good, certainly better than we could have hoped. Saw them both on the same day.

A couple of Costners - JFK, and The Untouchables (which I suppose is an assassination movie of sorts)

Oh, and I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, but another assassination movie I quite enjoyed was that Geena Davis/Samuel Jackson movie from the 90's, The Long Kiss Goodnight. (I'll get me coat now shall I?)

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OK, i know you were preferably looking for more realistic ones, but I just remembered another crazyass one... Two Days in the Valley. James Spader plays the assassin. I just love that movie. Similar in tone to Grosse Pointe Blank.

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why would anyone laugh at walken in dead zone? he's brilliant in that role, oscar nod worthy imo.
walken gave johnny's character a really tragic sense of loneliness instead of just hamming it up in some comic book style performance (which one might expect due to his paranormal "power"... or curse, morelike)

a great movie btw

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Memento
Elephant (could've been a ten minute movie though:rolleyes:)
the Long Kiss Goodnight
the Manchurian Candidate
JFK
the Passion of the Christ
Die Hard (any of them is pretty good)
Leon