The Hit

2023 • 98 minutes

About this movie

Before Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, director Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liasons) created one of the great British gangster films filled with revenge, violence and black humour. Driven by the self-confident charisma of Terence Stamp (Pricilla Queen of the Desert, Superman II), the vicious charm of John Hurt (The Elephant Man, Alien), and a fascinating debut performance by Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction), the film opens in Spain, where two contract killers (Hurt and Roth) are hired to kidnap a supergrass (Stamp) from his hide-out and deliver him to underworld bosses in Paris he'd betrayed years before. Along the way, the serene abductee, having become a bit enlightened during his ten-year retreat, seems unworried about death or anything else, and it's the killers who feel the strain of spilling his blood.