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MOVIESThe Most Awesome Movie You’ve Never Seen: THE BIG HIT
by ThaneEconomou
This 1998 action-comedy is Marky Mark and a funky bunch of hitmen battling gangsters, Lou Diamond Phillips, and video store late fees. This movie will rock your fucking brain till you puke awesome.
The Big Hit is produced by John Woo and Wesley Snipes. It is directed by prolific and highly acclaimed Hong Kong director Kirk Wong, who, after this, never directed another film. This movie is genuine awesome. And while at times the plot is played for laughs, this movie takes its action sequences very seriously.
It stars Marky Mark - who apparently goes by Mark Wahlberg now. Marky Mark, a former rapper with three nipples, makes one of his first big screen appearance here as Melvin Smiley. In this film he’s an overall, red-haired badass. One of the opening scenes shows him in a kickboxing/gymnastics montage.
The antagonist is played by formerly highly acclaimed actor Lou Diamond Phillips (from here on in affectionately referred to as LDP) of La Bamba and Bats distinction. He portrays a crazy and slick hitman named Cisco – no relation to the thong lover – who may be one of film history’s greatest characters.
Marky Mark plays a contract killer, and in the first action sequence, he actually runs so fast that he is in a blur. He flies through the air, shooting bad guys. He flips off the lights, and everyone instantly has night vision goggles, and they gun battle in the dark. A man pops out of a fountain with a machine gun; Marky Mark dodges the bullets, and kills him. After shooting his target, Marky Mark rigs the floor with explosives, bungee jumps out of the hotel window, and when the bungee breaks he falls into the pool below, alongside a single severed hand.
We meet the other men on his crew during a gratuitous shower room scene, in which longing close-ups of Marky Mark’s abs and a shot of LDP’s butt are shown. Other than LDP, the crew includes Antonio Sabato Jr. and a black guy who is obsessed with masturbating. Seriously. As the story goes, this black hitman only discovered jerking off weeks ago, and spends most of the movie renting porn, doing hand exercises, and talking lotion.
These are all manly, cool guys who dress up like construction workers before jobs and say things like: “hey baby, you’re so fine I wanna pour milk on you and make you part of a balanced breakfast.”
Marky Mark’s home life is in turmoil. At home, he’s got a fiancé, Christina Applegate, who can’t marry him because he’s not Jewish. He has a really hot black mistress, who wants to rob him and run off with her hunky boyfriend. And a local video store clerk is on his ass because he hasn’t returned a VHS copy of King Kong Lives. It’s no wonder this character is chugging Maalox throughout the whole movie.
So the plot. LDP and Marky Mark decide to kidnap the daughter of an Asian stereotype, Jiro Nishi. Nishi is a rich man who self produced, directed, and acted in a film called Taste The Golden Spray. Marky Mark picks up his hot, schoolgirl outfit wearing Asian daughter in a limo. In the back, with some white jerk, she almost gets date raped - before Marky Mark shoots him. This boy he murdered is literally never mentioned again in the entire film.
However, when their boss finds out about the unauthorized kidnapping, LDP says it was all Marky Mark’s idea. Now the entire gangster community, and LDP, are trying to kill our boy.
Of course, Marky Mark falls in love with the tied up Asian girl in his car (just like The Transporter). The following quote is actually muttered: “I’m gonna take your gag off, but you gotta promise not to scream.” The girl is handcuffed, so in the bathroom Marky Mark takes off her underwear, lets her pee, then romantically puts her underwear back on. In the kitchen, she helps him make Jewish food for his fiancé’s parents (Elliot Gould, Lainie Kazan). They rub a turkey together. A song called “She’s The One” plays in the background.
She asks if his job pays well. He says “You could say I make a killing.”
LDP comes to Marky Mark’s house to kill him. But Elliot Gould vomits on him, allowing our hero to escape. Then follows a car chase, wherein Marky Mark flips around his car and drives in reverse, all while shooting a machine gun.
This hullabaloo all leads to a massive, giant battle in a forest between LDP, in a car, and Marky Mark, lobbing grenades at him. Cars are crashed off cliffs. Cars explode multiple times. And bad green screening.
This cinematic masterpiece ends with a breathtaking fight scene in a video store. Lou Diamond Phillips says: “I come back to finish what I started mother fucker. Knuckle up bitch!” Marky Mark replies: “Yeah, let’s go mother fucker! Let’s work!” A climactic final battle ensues between VHS aisles and on scaffolding. And the whole thing ends with a giant explosion.
In the final moments, as I watched Marky Mark and his Asian girlfriend make out with too much tongue (I’m just saying, it’s noticeable), while on a sailboat, to the song “I’m The Man” by Buck-O-Nine, I pondered just how marvelous this movie truly is.
I am being very truthful when I say, ladies and gentlemen, you simply have not lived until you’ve seen the most awesome movie you’ve never seen. The Big Hit.
Previously in Thane Economou’s Most Awesome Movies You’ve Never Seen column:
[...] The Big Hit [...]