Der Profi-Killer

I second the "worth a look" rating. McGoohan and Van Cleef are both excellent and the film makes wonderful use of a few tracks from Brian Eno's Music for Films. It is not action packed, but it is suspenseful just the same.

This is, indeed, a quiet film with little dialog and few characters. Unfortunately, that style of filmmaking relies heavily on expert acting, an extremely sharp screenplay, and top-notch cinematography to succeed. The cinematography was fine. But the rest, not so much. McGoohan and VanCleef were both fine actors. McGoohan made his career by saying as little as possible so he fits perfectly into this style. But when they're asked to actually speak ... ugh. The dialog is generally hackneyed and stiff. The story elements, in general, were quite cliche'd even by 1979.

Overall I'd recommend watching it if you're a McGoohan or VanCleef fan. But otherwise you won't at a loss for missing it.

Seeing Patrick McGoohan and Lee Van Cleef in the same film, is reason enough to seek out "The Hard Way". McGoohan plays an Irish hit-man, obsessed with guns, who unexpectedly wants to retire. Van Cleef urges him to do one last difficult job for him, threatening McGoohan's wife for leverage. Eventually McGoohan reneges on the hit and kills a couple of hit men who are sent after him, leading to a cat and mouse climax between Van Cleef and McGoohan. The finale takes place in a booby trapped mansion and the confrontation and ending are both exciting and satisfying. For fans of either McGoohan or Van Cleef, this is a must see film. - MERK

I had to do a double take looking at this one whilst deciding whether or not to see it at this year's Edinburgh Film Festival IMDb voters score it a measly 4.9/10 currently, and yet on the other hand, it's produced by John Boorman, photographed by Henri Decaë, starring Patrick McGoohan and Lee van Cleef, with a soundtrack by Brian Eno? Did all those guys really screw up? The answer is manifestly no, and we have yet another inexplicable IMDb rating, perhaps caused by people voting for a different movie called The Hard Way (there are several)? So the film is shot in the UK, in Ireland, and in Paris, and is just gorgeous. The locations are dingy, all green stains, brown stains, darkness. The script is quite generic, it's about a hit-man (John Connor - McGoohan) who wants to retire but has the "one last job" forced on him, no added value in the plot structure at all. What is really poignant though is that throughout the movie we get a running commentary on Connor's character from his wife in eerie soliloquies. He is a very terse man, who only speaks when absolutely necessary and appears to have no personal connections, except with guns, for which he is an absolute nut. His wife says that he "never knew who he was or what he wanted", which is one of the saddest things I've ever heard, and made me feel quite weepy. He seems to have believed in his family as an abstract concept though and sends them quite unsolicited cheques after each job. His daughters, we are told, are in America doing well, which strangely makes the film quite beautiful, an effect perhaps like a robin flitting through a mouldy cemetery.

You would think in a low budgeter that the action scenes would be quite bad, but in fact they are really visceral and abrupt, done perfectly each time. Van Cleef plays middle man McNeal with whom there has to be a showdown following the refusal to allow McGoohan to retire. He does well but generally appears in the film's weaker scenes. You get the feeling that whoever wrote the script for this one was looking to do something entirely different to Decaë and McGoohan; Tombleson and Grogan the two credited writers have no other writing credits to their names, no idea why Boorman picked the script. There's some claptrap talk about mercenary assaults in Africa which caught the public imagination of the era, and McNeal does implausible juggling acts with the amount of missions on his plate. The final showdown, whilst very beautiful also looks to play on an antagonism between the two men which the film quite simply hadn't established, and wasn't the point of the movie. These men were set up by the movie as soulless automata, Connor capable of rage, but only as a defensive measure, he's the ultimate introvert. Despite the fact that the scriptwriters and the other creative dynamos in the film weren't on the same wavelength, I think it causes only subtle elements of discord to arise and in fact the film feels quite the masterpiece on reflection.

You'll notice that I haven't spoken about director Michael Dryhurst. There must be a story here, because this is the only film he has credit for directing, having been either an assistant director or producer all his career. It seems he took over when original director Tombleson (whom I mentioned also wrote the script) was taken off the movie as the result of a personality clash with McGoohan. It's quite possible that this allowed Decaë and McGoohan to take up the reins, though that's pure speculation on my part.

The mix of understated drama and taut plot, superbly punctuated with just the right amount of dramatic action,makes this a good flick for an evening watch. The acting is quite good enough, particularly Lee Van Cleef and Patrick McGoolan, as is the cinematography.