Panic
2000 Directed by Henry Bromell
Synopsis
Alex (Macy), a sad-eyed mournful man, goes into psychotherapy: he discloses he's a hit man. He also tells the doctor (Ritter), after a few sessions, that he's attracted to a young woman he's met in the waiting room. She's Sarah (Campbell), 23, quick, edgy, and perhaps attracted to him as well.
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An interesting and simple story of a hit-man who has an existential crisis. The hit-man aspect of the story is fairly inconsequential, it obviously plays into the overall story but it's more of a way to underscore the character's own mortality as well as heightening the stakes. I like William H. Macy, he and Donald Sutherland are very accomplished actors and are well-cast in their roles. The film missteps in the sub-plot which should have been more interesting, have taken more screen-time, and had a better resolution and impact.
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There's this hitman, right, and he starts going to a psychiatrist because he's afraid to tell his father/boss that he wants to quit the business, okay, and then, right, in the waiting room, he starts flirting with this girl, and then, right, even though he's married, he decides to start having an affair with her. Alright, it isn't the most original of genre-bending scenarios, but....? Writer-Director Bromell concocts his own problem. In his hell-bent journey to render this tired set of plots into something off-beat, he shoots himself in the foot by sacrificing consistency of tone as well as the development of most of the relationships in the film. He doesn't blow it entirely. What he has created is a…
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49.
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The premise of a subtle black comedy with Macy as a dissatisfied hitman working for his father sounds promising enough but tonally this is all over the place - it's not especially funny and the situation it sets up is so ludicrous it can't get away with playing it straight. Disappointing.