Bulletproof Heart

Hitman Mick is approached by small time mobster George to do a rush job that night on a woman (Fiona) who has stolen a lot of money from various people. However when Mick arrives he finds that she is not only expecting him but is ready to be killed. Mick is enticed by her and starts to get to know her – falling under her mysterious spell and eventually finding what he feels is love in his otherwise dead world. However the time must come.

This film is very stylish. It begins with a `hit' that is slow and quiet while `love is all around' plays in the background. This style stays with the whole film as it manages to feel both stagy but also be a cool and slick piece of film. The problem is that this style isn't fully carried into the plot or the characters. While the story of a hitman falling for his victim or finding love isn't new I still want something more than the usual.

This is too straight forward and expects us to make huge leaps way too quickly in the film. The slick direction almost helps to conceal this – but not quite. The lack of character development in the two lead roles also weakens the film. LaPaglia can stare into the distance and act detached all he wants but his sudden fall into love is not easy to swallow at any point. He almost manages to hide this by `looking deep and lost' but not totally. Rogers swings from bubbly to scared to ready every 5 minutes and we never get to go beneath the surface with her. Boyle is OK if only because his performance brings the strengths out in his role without exposing the weaknesses.

Overall a stylish directing job and several really nice touches do not a great film make. The weakness in plot and character are evident from 15 minutes in ans stay there for the rest of the film. It's a shame – a better developed script and characters would have made this a much better film. Good but flawed.

Bulletproof Heart (1994)

This wears its film noir visuals on its sleeve and even there, in the one clear intention by the filmmakers, it holds back. For one reason, it's in color, but not the noir intense color you might expect in a modern iteration, but a dull and workaday visual approach with grey blacks and soft edges. Too bad, because the visuals were the one hope for making this thing work.

The idea is promising--a woman knows she is going to be killed by a hired killer, and she seduces the killer(s) and avoids her death, at least at first (not to give away the end). But that is the entire plot idea, totally, so for an hour and a half we slowly (slowly) get there. There is a lot of "soft porn" as we go, and not very good either (not advancing the plot and not for its own sake, whatever soft porn is supposed to be doing in a movie in the first place). The script has shades of the clipped dialog and indifference lead character of noir, but maybe the comparison to great films of the past isn't helping appreciate this one.

The director, Mark Malone, has a series of five star movies to his name (five out of ten) except his last one, which gets three. This is his first, and it feels like it, with some clumsy breaks in the narrative flow that feel like film school tricks. The writing is painful, the editing lazy.

There are better low budget crime and suspense films to cut your teeth on.

Lapaglia is tremendous as the icy hitman who not only thaws from the heat of passion, but burns to a cinder in the process! Mimi Rogers is good as the object of his obsession. This modern noir film should not be missed. Lapaglia stunning performance runs the gambit of emotion and melts the screen!Don't miss it!

Although just a decade ago, Anthony LaPaglia was a wild guy in movies, not the subdued leader of the hit TV program "Without A Trace." He usually played very profane guys, too. That's certainly the case here in this film which I've always seen labeled "Bulletproof Heart," (not "Killer").

Actually, all four lead actors in this movie were interesting: assassin LaPaglia, love-sex- interest Mimi Rogers, comedians Matt Craven and Peter Boyle. The latter two play comedian-types, I should say. Craven is particularly funny in this movie. Rogers is here mainly to show off her huge breasts. She shows them off particularly in a bondage-type scene that is a bit sick. (This movie isn't exactly The Sound Of Music, morally-speaking. It's pretty sleazy.)

The film has a good mixture of drama, humor, sex, violence and suspense. However, it also is a good example of Hollywood's depravity, pagan views and fatalistic viewpoints. Seeing more and more of that with my second and third viewing of this , my rating went lower and lower until I finally canned this from my collection. It's just too sordid.....but, for the first-time viewer, a real eye-opener which keeps your attention.

I've searched for a copy of this movie on DVD in stores, on-line for 10 years and finally located a VHS copy from Amazon.

I truly do NOT understand why this movie isn't listed in Mimi Roger's or Anthony Lapaglia's Wikis as I regard it as their best work. I plan to copy the VHS to DVD ands share it on torrent sites.

No one else seems to give a flip about marketing it on DVD or I'd have ordered it by now.

Never play leapfrog with a Unicorn.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

There's your ten lines, Bubba.