Why is it such a romantic career? why is it so cool?
Living outside the law ....
travelling the world ...
working for yourself ...
even the job gets a cool name " the cleaner" , "the proferssional" , " the mechanic"
..but at the end of the day a hit man is a cold blooded murderer
A hitman is a professional. You have to respect him above an ordinary gangbanger. A hitman will plan a job, do it efficiently without collateral damage. A thug won't. People kill and get killed. At least, with a pro, there are usually no innocent lives lost.
Plus, it's not as romantic a career as the movies portray it to be. Just like being a spy or a cop. Like with a spy or a cop, it requires looong periods of waiting, watching, listening. The perfect example would be the ending of "Assassins", when Banderas waits all day for Stallone and can't move so he wouldn't miss him.
well , being "above" an ordinary gangbanger dosent really put you at the top of the social scale, a crackhead could do that , at least they dont go around killing people.
"usually no innocent lives lost." - except the target.
Well, it depends on the target, I suppose. The movies romanticize them. They show them as loners with a moral code. The truth is hardly like that.
shareTruth is if someone wants to kill an innocent for money, power gain, revenge a hitman will take a few thousand to do it, they dont care if they are innocent or not, there is no code.
You hear stories of people paying dudes to off their spouses and getting caught in the process. The hitmen are usually nefarious characters who arent very smart who would do anything for a bit of money.
Hitmen or people that take money to kill someone are pretty much seen as scum in the real world. In the movies its different because there's a disconnect between movie hitman and real life or even movie violence and real life violence.
People are living vicariously through movies even though they wouldnt want to do it or even be near a person who took money to off someone, sit and have a conversation with them.
All in all it's an interesting subject in movies and literature, same with gangsters.
Hitmen are usually loners, loners are not part of normal society and therefore have a different perspective on life and society which makes them very interesting even if they often don’t say much.
shareFor one thing a hitman doesn't kill innocent people just for kicks. If someone hires a hitman to kill someone it isn't because the person is some saint it is because the person is a piece of shit and the hitman is just cleaning things up. If you look at everyone in the movie he was paid to kill, who were they? They were drug dealers and thugs, so what's the problem with killing them.
shareIn the films they pick those targets to make it 'ok' , but they dont always have to be drug dealers and thugs , they could be politicians , union leaders, captains of industry , anyone with power or influence... In fact the only real life cases ive heard of is husbands or wives having their partners killed for the money they would gain.
shareI'm going to add to mark's post with "they dont always have to be drug dealers and thugs, they could be politicians, union leaders, captains of industry, anyone with power or influence"...
After seeing the movie Standoff..i think we can safely say Professionals can be paid to kill ANYONE...([spoiler]As we see during that whole movie the Hit Man is trying to kill an innocent little girl.[/spoiler]
Also I am in agreement that "at the end of the day a Hit Man is cold blooded Murderer"
Cause we all want to kill with impunity. Here's a secret the world doesn't want you to know. Most murders go unsolved. There's a HUGE spin by the media about how infallible crime enforcement is but the truth is, even with all these cameras, that they can't solve unmotivated murders for shit. An outside bloke swoops into town and commits a murder for a contract, they might catch the contractor. But that murderer is out killing a dozen more people tomorrow.
shareBecause hitman do not kill for the pleasure of causing harm, like a psychopath, but for their skill and for the money. They are probably anti social by nature and stay removed from human contact so they can do their job simply as a job without empathy. They don't need to know the details of their contracts and can presume their marks are deserving..And their loner nature makes it easier.
But films like this show that they do have a human side and and can have empathy and that makes them all the more interesting.
Leon is popular because he discovers his humanity, is able to see right and wrong and use his skill set for a good cause.
You are presuming a lot of stuff. People that take money to kill are usually dumb thugs who would take things one step further for that extra bit of money and most probably do enjoy it or they wouldnt want to go one step further.
And I doubt they do it out of their need to show skill. Whats the skill in running up on a woman/man in a car park and popping a couple of bullets into them so the husband/wife can get their hands on the insurance money.
Are you talking about movie hitmen or real life people who have taken money to kill someone?
I'm talking about professional assassins as depicted in this film. Not people that would do it for drug money or advertise in the back of magazines to off a lay person.
shareanyone can recommend some great obscure hitman movies? besides the obvious such as Leon, No Country For Old Men
shareTheres the one where the pretty boy form 90210 is the apprentice , and I think its the guy from Alien who says "right" all the time is the older mentor hitman.
That 90210 boy can really act it turns out. He really portrayed the kind of coldness / lack of empathy you must have to have to be a hitman.
One reason why people idolize hitmen is because of the way hitmen are portrayed in film and video games. They are depicted as being cool, calm, collected, and having everything planned out perfectly. Furthermore, the targets they are assigned are more often than not "bad" people who "deserve" to be killed. Unfortunately, this is also one of the biggest problems with the genre, and with most films and video games in general that involve killing.
Writers will often try their best to justify the actions of the protagonist to the point where the audience, or the player, will agree that the protagonist is "right" in killing his targets. John Wick is a perfect example of this, especially in the first film which is a revenge film at heart. The revenge genre is structured around creating a justification for the protagonist to kill a bunch of people without the audience feeling guilty for enjoying it.
This is a big problem I have with the Hitman series of video games, where Agent 47 always happens to be given a target that is an all-round bad guy that deserves to die; it's ridiculous. It's rare that you will get a hitman that kills people for money, regardless of the morality of the situation, and even then, they are mostly villains, such as Vincent in Collateral.
A good example of a protagonist that bucks this trend is the 2009 Hong Kong film Accident, where the protagonist kills his targets in such a way to make them appear like an accident, and not a targeted killing. Even though he is still cool, calm and collected, having everything planned out perfectly, the targets he is paid to kill are often just people whose death will net his employers a profit.