Hitmen In Movies. - by Maxwell Okikiola

I want to talk about movies again. I love talking about movies because they are my own window into the world. It’s like a portal that shows me what is happening around the world, how people act, and how they react. I know movies are not accurate reflections of humanity or people’s day-to-day lives, but they are still the closest thing I get to the world at large, apart from my actual window whenever I kneel down to look through it, or whenever I have enough money to go outside. And I haven’t had enough money to go out in a month, so, yeah, it’s movies. I have to talk about that. When we’re talking about action movies, we’re often talking about assassins. Whenever I hear the word hitman, I picture someone trained to eliminate a target as quickly, quietly, and precisely as possible. They are not supposed to be messy because messiness defeats the entire purpose of what they are trained to do. Of course, some hitmen can be reckless or leave a trail of destruction behind them, but that should be a consequence of something going wrong, not the actual objective. A hitman can use a gun, poison, or even make a killing look like an accident. There are different methods, but the principle remains the same: identify the target, eliminate the target, and get out. That is why I sometimes find the way movies portray hitmen a little ridiculous. You watch these characters spend years training in the art of killing, only for them to encounter a target and suddenly turn into martial arts champions. They start throwing punches, kicking people, grappling, jumping around, and fighting bodyguards for what feels like five straight minutes. Why? If you are an assassin, why are you voluntarily turning a clean operation into a full-blown fight? If a hitman encounters a room full of bodyguards, I would expect him to find the fastest and most efficient way around them. If he has to engage one, fine, eliminate him quickly and keep moving. If the situation becomes too complicated, get out and try again. The entire point is to reach the target, not to prove that you can defeat every person standing between you and them. And this is probably why, despite not being particularly fond of the John Wick movies, John Wick is one of the better examples of what I mean. John can fight, obviously, but his fighting usually feels like another method of accomplishing the objective. He does not seem interested in winning a fight for the sake of winning it. He shoots, strikes, grapples, disarms, uses whatever is available, and keeps moving. There is a certain economy to his violence. He wants the person in front of him dead so he can get to the next person, not because he suddenly remembered that he spent twenty years studying kung fu. That, to me, is the difference between a martial artist and an assassin. A martial artist is trained to fight. An assassin should be trained to make sure a fight is unnecessary. If the entire operation has turned into a spectacular five-minute exchange of punches, kicks, and flying bodies, then something has already gone horribly wrong. If you are going to portray someone as a highly trained killing machine, let the character actually behave like one. I do not need to see him perform fifty different fighting techniques to believe he is dangerous. Sometimes the most convincing assassin is the one who makes the entire thing look effortless. He walks into the room, eliminates the target, and disappears before anyone has time to understand what happened. A killing machine should be a killing machine, not a kicking machine.

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