Working as a professional film critic, I get access to a lot of guys who have seen a lot of films (much like myself), and as a community we're always turning each other on to classic, vintage, and relatively unknown gems in hopes of further educating ourselves and spreading the word on deserving -- and often underrated -- cinema. But not everyone has this kind of access. For everyone else, there's The Criterion Collection. Odd thing is, they possess movie geeks that often surprise even many of us in the industry. Take for example Stephen Frears' The Hit. Now I'm a huge hit man movie buff. I can spew off dozens of obscure titles -- some classic, some terrible -- but for some reason I had never seen this one. And man, am I glad I have now.

You most likely know Frears by his work in The Queen, The Grifters, High Fidelity, or maybe even his criminally underseen Dirty Pretty Things. But The Hit is his stab at an '80s era film noir. Extremely minimalist, the film focuses upon four characters in a car on a dastardly trip together. After having ratted out his fellow criminal cohorts, Willie Parker (Terence Stamp) has spent the last ten years hiding out in Spain. But when the crime boss he put away gets out of prison, Willie finds himself kidnapped by two hit men -- a seasoned pro (John Hurt) and a young turk on his first job (Tim Roth). Along the way they pick up an additional hostage, played by a very quiet Laura del Sol (in one of her only English language appearances). There's only one hitch: Willie Parker is all too eager to go. You see, Willie has always known this day was coming. So he lived life to its fullest and looked forward with only one concern: that when his time came it was done right. By a professional. Mr. Braddock (John Hurt) is the consummate professional. So with matters well in hand, Willie kicks back to enjoy his last ride.

And all that makes these two cold-blooded killers quite uneasy.

What follows is an examination of life and death from the point of view of someone who takes it professionally, juxtaposed against someone very willing to give it. This is mixed, of course, with a healthy dose of noir-style dialogue, bad hombres, and a killer Spanish score. It's rare to find an existential noir film -- but here one is, newly cleaned up and looking beautiful on DVD. While this thing isn't exactly loaded with special features (and really, who can expect it to be after 25 years?) what it does have is pretty great. There's a classic 36-minute 1988 interview with Terence Stamp when he was on his book tour after writing two autobiographies. This is just about as good as interviews of this type get. Really deep, really intimate. The other feature is a new commentary track. While it is one of those edited-together commentaries -- culled from several sessions with different people who aren't all in the same room -- there's tons of great information and tidbits to be gleaned from Frears, Hurt, Roth, writer Peter Prince, and the film's editor (who is actually in the room with Frears), Mike Audsley.

A truly wonderful, long overlooked film, The Hit is available now from The Criterion Collection.

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