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The problem of Henri Boulanger is similar to that of Odysseus who told his friends to tighten him up at a pole of his ship before they drive through Scylla and Charybdis, and, to never obey him if he asks them to loose the ties, because otherwise he will be lost for either of the two monsters. In the case of Henry Boulanger it is so that this sober, never-drinking, never womanizing Kafkaesque office-worker suddenly looses his job, when the company wants to shrink. Boulanger, who never had tasted the sweet delirium of alcohol and the seductive odor of cigarettes, does not know a catalytic spirit of auxiliary constructions that would help him over the shock of having lost his job. So, he does what nobody else would do in his situation: he hires a contract killer. However, shortly after having paid the sum to kill himself, he enters a bar where they do not sell tea, so, for the first time, under the horizon of his life coming to a soon end, he drinks whiskey after whiskey, learns how good this is for him and smokes cigarette after cigarette, greedily trying to catch up what he had missed his whole life. There, in the bar, he meets Margaret, his first and therefore biggest love of his life. Clearly, having tasted the real fruits of life, he does not want to die anymore. But how can he make his killers clear that he want to withdraw from his contract? While Odysseus stays cuffed on his pole, Boulanger errs lost like Odysseus through London.

Do you like classics? Do you have a thing for Hitchcock, or lets say, Jean Pierre Melville? Do you wanna see how does that translate into a more modern progressive movie? Well! here is what you do: You go straight to a club and you purchase 'I Hired a Contract Killer'! It sticks with you; the futility, the humor, and the suspense. This is a picture that no matter what, you gonna remember for ever. The futility is so rich, that itself becomes the core meaning to everything. And the situation gets so baffled that emptiness becomes a survival. The suspension is perfectly 'Hitchcokic'& the use of music is great. It is among the pictures that secures you; makes you sure that still cinema exists; A cinema that tells you a story, a breathtaking one - and damn, Kourismaki is a great story teller; a noble one. One of the few left from the true heritage of motion picture industry and art. Lay back, watch and enjoy. This is pure cinema. As you might have guessed, I fully recommend it!

I watched a documentary about Aki Kaurimaki (one of my favourite directors) in which he stated that he was sick and tired of pages and pages of dialogue he had written ending up on the cutting room floor. So he keeps the dialogue to a minimum. This film is a perfect example of this philosophy. This is Kaurismaki's trademark. Anyone who has seen "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" or "Arial" will recognise his sparing use of dialogue rather than having characters speak just for the sake of speaking. It is no wonder that his most recent film "Juha" was a silent film.

This is a very dark and very realistic film about loneliness and depression. All the main characters in the film are lonely people, with very little to live for. Anyone who liked Tom Di Cillo's "Johnny Suede" will find that this is a very film to "I hired a Contract Killer". Personally, I loved this film and would highly recommend it to anyone with an appreciation for fine art house cinema.

"I Hired a Contract Killer" unites on the same crossroad two helpless and persistent souls of the world cinema, working with a plot that suits them almost perfectly: director/writer Aki Kaurismaki and actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. I include the latter not much because of his real persona but mostly due to his most commonly associated character, the troubled Antoine Doinel, which in a way could be a figure of a Kaurismaki film and the director takes some advantage of that to make Léaud be part of his strange yet dark humored vignettes involving helpless characters dealing with meaningless lives until they find exquisite solutions for their problems.

The eternal Doinel, usually confident and striving for a certain goal (as evidenced in his later adventures post "The 400 Blows"), gives space to Henri Boulanger, a French subordinate working on a bureaucratic position at a British company, utterly lost and alone, until the day he gets fired from there, receiving as a gift a broken gold watch. With the money he still has, he decides to hire a hit-man to kill him since he's too yellow to kill himself. Why bother sticking around now that he really hit rock bottom, with no job, no people who care for him and being just another foreigner living in a cold and distant place.

But the man who brought us "Ariel" and "Shadows in Paradise" has to give Henri a turn-around that can save his life and also complicates things even more. He falls for a flower girl (Margi Clarke) who corresponds such love, they move in together, despite the fact he has nothing to offer to her but the hired killer (Kenneth Corley) is still tracking him down and he is destined to fulfill his contract and kill Henri. Typical of Kaurismaki, who always finds humor in desolated characters and awkward situations. Everything is strangely life affirming without getting near the corny clichés of Hollywood.

The union between Kaurismaki and Léaud is the main ingredient to enjoy such story, not as dark as it sounds but eventually nightmarish as Henri's problems becomes more and more unnerving (hilarious to some, but we all know that Aki's films are only amusing to very few who can actually laugh out loud - though that's not the director's intentions, he prefers the contained laughters). It's interesting to see Léaud becoming the anti-Doinel, here someone who is far removed from any chance of accomplishing anything, always escaping and giving up easily. But fate helps them both, in unexpected and intriguing ways. And we laugh at their confusion while facing the obstacles life throws at them.

Compared with other Kaurismaki films I've seen and Doinel's five films, "I Hired a Contract Killer" is miles away of being equally great as the fore-mentioned examples. And for the first time I identified more with the drama than with the comedy since most of the elements given were too hollow and so narrow with the drama that I couldn't find them much funny - characteristic of the Finnish creator but more effective in his other films. Another downer was having to deal with Léaud's poor English, practically impossible to understand. Why not make Henri meeting with a French girl, so there could be a real sense of connection between both (and captions so we can read instead of hearing forced accents)? Aside that, there's room for some fine suspense and a great musical cameo by Joe Strummer.

What's to be learned? With Doinel films I feel hope, courage and the sense that things can get better, even with some losses on the way. Now, with Henri's story, I know things can get worse but we can always push harder for one more day and see what happens next. A very needed film in darker times, because we all need to laugh at the absurd. 7/10

Great movie. Based on the story by Jules Verne Les Tribulations d'un chinois en Chine, Kaurismaki surprise us again with his strange humorous style. A story about feelings in an inexpressive way; don't mind how blue you can feel, there's always a place for love and hope. People and their contradictions; a man who don't want to live, contracts a killer who don't want to die. If you have seen any Kaurismaki's films, you should know that they are different; His way of filming and his stories are not "normal" in the commercial way; he seems to keep the distances with the characters, and that could be annoying for some people; but if you like it, you will love all his films. Kaurismaki is a genius, and he is funny too.