There’s something charming about semi-shitty films from the ‘90s that similarly low hanging fruit released in the aughts and beyond just can’t seem to muster. I’d like to think it’s just the curious effects of nostalgia, but that was a decade whose cinematic output began to look outdated almost immediately after the start of the new millennium. You can choose almost any B-level action film made between 1991 and 1999 (the kind that persistently rerun on TBS) and get the distinct feeling you’re watching a transmission from an alternate reality. With their curious relationships with technology, jarring musical accompaniment and tenuous tether to realism, you start to wonder if these movies were even made on this planet.
That’s one of the things I absolutely adore about 1998’s The Big Hit, Kirk Wong’s sly, prescient action comedy starring Boogie Nights-era Mark Wahlberg. He plays Melvin Smiley, a Maalox chugging people pleaser who moonlights as a contract killer. On the surface, Melvin is styled like any other shoot ‘em up protagonist. He’s versed in multiple martial arts, proficient with gunplay and chiseled like a limited edition G.I. Joe. Outside of his preternatural skills as a hitman for hire, Melvin’s a complete pushover, struggling to keep his gold digging “girlfriend” (Lela Rochon) as happy as his spoiled fiancée (Christina Applegate). Even his co-workers, fellow pro murderers, relentlessly rib him and mock his struggles. Money troubles and his inability to say the word “No” get him caught up in a plot created by his frienemy Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips), as their team embarks on an unauthorized side job kidnapping a tech giant’s daughter (China Chow, in her film debut).
What makes The Big Hit so unique isn’t its paint by the numbers narrative. There’s hundreds of films that follow that note-perfect blueprint with ease. It’s also certainly not its execution, because the entire ordeal is pretty patchwork and its budget shows through in multiple key moments of questionable special effects usage. No, what sets it apart is that nineties charm, that distinctly Gen-X sense of post-modern navel gazing that reframes a straightforward action movie as a workplace comedy of errors. There are times when the film’s tone has more in common with the farcical stylings of Noises Off than any of the John Woo gun ballets it blatantly aspires to rip off. Wong had worked with Jackie Chan in the past, so there’s an offbeat rhythm to Wahlberg’s action choreography that feels reminiscent of Chan’s stateside output. It’s more adorable than pathetic, coming off as a loving homage stifled by technical inadequacy, kind of the physical blocking equivalent to drunken, but endearing karaoke.
Outside of Wahlberg’s pleasant portrayal of an anxiety ridden mercenary, every other cast member is decidedly game, breathing raucous life into otherwise forgettable stereotypes. Avery Brooks and Eliot Gould, as Melvin’s boss and prospective father-in-law respectively, obviously deserve to be elsewhere, in some better movie, but they narrowly sidestep scenery chewing caricature to craft some brilliant background figures. Bokeem Woodbine comes off as the most sincere and relatable, despite being asked to play a man obsessed with the zen of masturbation, but it’s Lou Diamond Phillips who prevails in the battle of who could overachieve more. In his capable hands, Cisco is a sleazy ball of fire and swagger. He lands somewhere between John Leguizamo in Romeo + Juliet and John Leguizamo in Spawn on the comic book-y villain scale, but every moment of screen time he has elevates the flick higher than it probably deserves to be.
Tonally, The Big Hit manages to tick off a lot of boxes. It’s got that Trapper Keeper colored aesthetic to remind you what year it is and how barely coordinated we were as a society, while remaining nearly as satirical as Clueless. In that regard, it’s a little like Grosse Point Blank’s ditzier cousin, lacking the warmth of John Cusack’s exhausted visage, but making up for it anime influenced overtones. There’s a cartoonishness on display that presages the entirety of the Fast & Furious franchise, with its mash-up of superheroic screen battles and a multi-cultural cast equally ready to dumb it down for kicks. That a movie built for the VHS era climaxes with a bombastic fight scene set at a video store seems a little too on the nose, but with every passing year, I revisit this film wondering how it would be received now, perhaps with someone like Channing Tatum at the help. The Big Hit wasn’t quite ahead of its time, but in my personal canon, it ranks a notch above many of its similarly cast aside brethren. It’s the perfect way to kill two hours watching Cinemax on a Thursday afternoon.