Popularity: 2 (history)
Director: | Aki Kaurismäki |
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Writer: | Aki Kaurismäki |
Staring: |
After losing his job and realizing that he is alone in the world, a businessman opts to voluntarily end his life. Lacking courage, he hires a contract killer to do the job. Then, while awaiting his demise, he meets a woman and promptly falls in love. | |
Release Date: | Oct 12, 1990 |
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Director: | Aki Kaurismäki |
Writer: | Aki Kaurismäki |
Genres: | Comedy, Drama, Romance, Crime |
Keywords | london, england, florist, dark comedy, contract killer, redundancy |
Production Companies | Pandora Film, Pyramide Productions, Villealfa Filmproductions, Finnkino, Esselte Video, Channel 4 Television, Megamania |
Box Office |
Revenue: $0
Budget: $0 |
Updates |
Updated: Jul 30, 2025 Entered: Apr 13, 2024 |
Name | Character |
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Jean-Pierre Léaud | Henri |
Margi Clarke | Margaret |
Kenneth Colley | The Killer |
T.R. Bowen | Departmen Head |
Imogen Claire | Secretary |
Angela Walsh | Landlady |
Cyril Epstein | Cab Driver |
Nicky Tesco | Pete |
Charles Cork | Al |
Michael O'Hagan | Killer's Boss |
Tex Axile | Bartender |
Walter Sparrow | Receptionist |
Tony Rohr | Frank |
Joe Strummer | Guitarist |
Peter Graves | Jeweller |
Serge Reggiani | Vic |
Ette Elliot | Daughter |
Aki Kaurismäki | Sunglasses Seller (uncredited) |
Erkki Lahti | Man at the Hotel Albania's Window (uncredited) |
Minna Virtanen | Flower Seller (uncredited) |
Roberto Pla | Bongo Man (uncredited) |
Name | Job |
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Aki Kaurismäki | Editor, Director, Story, Screenplay |
Timo Salminen | Director of Photography |
Jaakko Talaskivi | Assistant Production Manager |
John Ebden | Production Design |
Martin Bruce-Clayton | Line Producer |
David P. Kelly | Line Producer |
Mark Lavis | Art Direction |
Klaus Heydemann | Production Manager |
Ronald Bailey | Boom Operator |
Timo Linnasalo | Sound |
Danny Malone | Sound Assistant |
Jouko Lumme | Sound Editor |
Simon Murray | Costume Design |
Andy Pavord | Location Manager |
Pauli Pentti | Unit Production Manager, First Assistant Director |
Robert Fabbri | Second Assistant Director |
Kari Laine | Second Assistant Director |
Malla Hukkanen | Script Supervisor, Still Photographer |
Jacques Cheuiche | First Assistant Camera |
Wolfgang Kluge | Grip |
Olli Varja | Gaffer |
Tom Forsström | Sound Re-Recording Mixer |
Heikki Ukkonen | Property Master |
Haije Alanoja | Production Secretary |
Erkki Astala | Post Production Coordinator |
Beryl Mortimer | Sound Effects |
Danny Coulson | Negative Cutter |
Peter A. Hoffman | Gaffer |
Peter von Bagh | Idea |
Nigel Ashby | Carpenter |
Sarah Horton | Property Buyer |
Philip Hunt | Props |
Richard F. Ward III | Carpenter |
Peter Bass | Electrician |
George Cowen | Genetator Operator |
Isabella Fernandes | Second Assistant Camera |
Andy Eliot | Assistant Location Manager |
Charlie Woodhouse | Assistant Location Manager |
Jamie Forder | Driver |
Irmeli Debarle | Dialogue Coach |
Jonathan Finn | Production Assistant |
Tom Houghton | Production Assistant |
Peter La Terriere | Production Assistant |
Erkki Lahti | Catering |
Mikko Lyytikäinen | Translator |
Giulia Maura | Production Assistant |
Michael Powell | In Memory Of |
Name | Title |
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Aki Kaurismäki | Producer |
Organization | Category | Person |
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Popularity History
Year | Month | Avg | Max | Min |
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2024 | 4 | 10 | 15 | 7 |
2024 | 5 | 12 | 17 | 7 |
2024 | 6 | 12 | 21 | 7 |
2024 | 7 | 10 | 19 | 5 |
2024 | 8 | 9 | 12 | 6 |
2024 | 9 | 9 | 19 | 6 |
2024 | 10 | 10 | 19 | 7 |
2024 | 11 | 10 | 25 | 6 |
2024 | 12 | 10 | 22 | 6 |
2025 | 1 | 8 | 12 | 5 |
2025 | 2 | 6 | 10 | 3 |
2025 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 1 |
2025 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
2025 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
2025 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
2025 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
2025 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
2025 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
2025 | 10 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Trending Position
Very early in his career, the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki established an aesthetic for his films in colour that has held for decades now: the characters are blue-collar people struggling to get by, and whatever emotions they feel, their lines of hatred, love, hope, or disappointment are communicat ... ed in an utterly deadpan, monotone fashion. The scenery is usually drab industrial buildings and rusting dockyards. Kaurismäki's 1990 film I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER moves that formula, developed in his native Helsinki, to London. This is not the posh London of the royal family, bankers or socialites. Kaurismäki managed to find completely dilapidated locations that I would have never imagined to exist in London of that time (though no doubt they've long since been gentrified beyond recognition at this point). Henri Boulanger (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a timid Frenchman living in London with no apparent friends or surviving family, has worked for fifteen years for a state utility. When he is made redundant in a bit of Thatcher-era privatization, he feels he has nothing more to live for. He attempts suicide twice, both tries ending in morbidly humorous failure, and he lacks the courage to try any further. He decides to enter the East End criminal underworld and to hire a paid assassin to kill him. The mob boss takes Henri's money and tells him it will be done through a subcontractor. But when Henri meets the lovely Margaret (Margi Clarke) and starts coming out of his shell, he suddenly has second thoughts. Unable to call off the job, he and Margaret try to evade the hitman (Kenneth Colley), already on Boulanger's trail. Kaurismäki's films are, to a large extent, dark comedies, and there are some laughs here. I also appreciated the element of homage to Kaurismäki's forebears and peers here. Colley's sad hitman and the way the shots frame him was surely drawn from the crime capers that Jean-Pierre Melville shot in his last years. Kaurismäki's perennial love for drab scenery had been boosted by his newly established friendship with Jim Jarmusch, a director who presented America at this time as so many vacant lots and abandoned buildings. Still, I wouldn't consider this among Kaurismäki's best work. One of the things that makes Kaurismäki's main, Finnish-language output so hilarious is that the characters speak in literary Finnish (nearly a different language than colloquial Finnish). When the dialogue is in English and with a mix of UK accents, the formula is not quite as effective. Jean-Pierre Léaud's English is almost incomprehensible -- the actor has been a titan of French film since the New Wave of Truffaut and Godard, but he's not proficient enough in English to do English-language cinema. Kaurismäki no doubt wanted intended the character to sound that way, but it feels off for this viewer. I'd recommend this film only to those who have enjoyed a series of Kaurismäki's stronger films of the era like the so-called "Proletariat Trilogy"
"Henri" (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is so down in the dumps that he decides it's time to end it all. Not suicide, though - nope. He decides to pay a local gangster £1,000 to do the job in the style of an hit! OK, money's money thinks his would be assassin so the job is assigned to his veteran enforcer Kenne ... th Colley - but it turns out that he hasn't his problems to seek either. To make matters even more complex, "Henri" is sitting in the pub - awaiting what he hopes will be the inevitable - when he meets "Margaret" (Margi Clarke). She's trying to make a living selling flowers and after a brief chat, well might it be possible that something may come of this friendship that might cause him to have a change of heart? Can he even have a change of heart? There's refund mechanism if the job fails - but if he cancels it? The threads of the three principal characters are woven engagingly together here as what initially looked like a rather daft fait accompli starts to develop into something altogether more characterfully light-hearted. Margi Clarke never failed to bring some edgy charisma to the screen and here she gels well with a Léaud whom I don't think I've ever seen doing a part in English before. His vulnerabilities, clumsiness even, with that tongue help to add a piquancy to his increasingly awakening persona. This also benefits from a brevity. At just shy of eighty minutes, it moves along efficiently telling the story in a focussed fashion that doesn't meander off to sink us in cheesy sentiment and there's plenty of will he/won't he to keep us guessing.