If you’re a hitman, don’t get an eye exam on the same day you’re scheduled to do a job. This is an important lesson I learned watching 1991’s Diary of a Hitman. In the meantime, I learned another lesson: there really isn’t any reason to spend 90 minutes watching Diary of a Hitman.
The movie opens with Forest Whitaker at a pay phone in a Pittsburgh train station. Given how he is monologuing, he must be talking to an answering machine. That answering machine must have one of those 90-minute cassette tapes in it and can automatically flip to the next side, cause Whitaker’s narration runs the course of the movie. Also, that has to be one damn expensive call. I hope it wasn’t long distance.
Whittaker plays a hitman here, and what should have been a straight-forward performance becomes a much stranger animal. I’m not sure what he was aiming for, but his character feels like little more than a collection of odd little quirks than a cohesive person. I used to wonder why he even did Battlefield Earth but, to be brutally honest, the weirdness of his performance here isn’t too far off from that film.
It is difficult to describe exactly what is wrong about it. He imbues every line reading with seemingly the wrong inflection intentionally, even randomly. Even his expressions and body language seem to correspond to something other than the particular moment they occur in.
I started to wonder if this was what the director wanted, or maybe this was due to lack of direction. Hard to say, as this was director Roy London’s only feature. There are some elements here that suggest comedy, such as how the assignments Whitaker receives are retrieved from the lining of the collection hat of a mime performing in a park. This scene is nonsensical and unfunny, but it indicates something unusual, perhaps slightly subversive, was the objective.
Sherilynn Fenn plays the next job for Whitaker to complete. He’ll get a significant bonus if he also dispenses with her infant son. I have been a fan of hers since Twin Peaks, but she fares here as poorly as the headliner.
Similar to Whitaker, I don’t know what she was supposed to do with this material. When she first opens the door to her apartment for him, thinking he’s a TV repairman, he tackles her to the ground. She wriggles out and jumps behind the sofa. Soon, she is peeking up from over it and asking if he’s OK. Yeah, that’s what any woman would do in the situation—confirm your assailant isn’t hurt.
Later, in an attempt to seduce him, she strips down to her underwear and does a cheerleader routine. Soon, she’ll get caught up in the drapes and accidentally brings them down. Hey, there’s a home invader who intends to kill you and your baby, but you get caught in the drapes. It’s like I Love Lucy, just with the looming threat of homicide.
Absolutely the only thing in Diary of a Hitman that worked for me is the creepy setup where Fenn is the only tenant of the apartment building built by her estranged husband. That may be damning with faint praise, but this is a damned movie.
Dir: Roy London
Starring Forest Whitaker, Sherilynn Fenn, Seymour Cassel
Watched on Screenpix