I Hired a Contract Killer

I Hired a Contract Killer is a film directed, produced and written by the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki in 1990. It is a Finnish-British-German-Swedish co-production and stars the renowned French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. The film also features cameo appearances by Joe Strummer as a guitar player^[3] and by Kaurismäki as a sunglasses salesman. The film was remade in 1998 as Bulworth, staring Warren Beatty.^[4]

I Hired a Contract Killer
Directed by	Aki Kaurismäki
Written by	Aki Kaurismäki
Produced by	Aki Kaurismäki
Starring	Jean-Pierre Léaud Margi Clarke Kenneth Colley
Cinematography	Timo Salminen
Edited by	Aki Kaurismäki
Music by	Roberto Pla
Production companies	Villealfa Filmproductions Svenska Filminstitutet
Distributed by	Finnkino
Release dates	13 September 1990 (1990-09-13) (Venice Film Festival) 12 October 1990 (1990-10-12) (Finland)
Running time	79 minutes^[1]
Countries	Finland Sweden
Language	English
Budget	£800,000^[2]

Plot

Henri Boulanger (Léaud), a French man living in London, is laid-off from his job after fifteen years of service. He tries to commit suicide but because he continuously fails, decides to hire a hitman (Kenneth Colley) to finish the job. After making the contract he meets Margaret (Margi Clarke) and finds new meaning to life, however, he is unable to call off the hitman.

See also

• Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (novel by Jules Verne, 1879)
• Flirting with Fate (1916)
• The Man in Search of His Murderer (1931)
• The Whistler (1944)
• You Only Live Once (1952)
• Five Days (1954)
• Up to His Ears (1965)
• Tulips (1981)
• Bulworth (1998)
• Shut Up and Shoot Me (2005)

References

1. "I Hired a Contract Killer". British Board of Film Classification.
2. "Back to the Future: The Fall and Rise of the British Film Industry in the 1980s - An Information Briefing" (PDF). British Film Institute. 2005. p. 24.
3. . The Joe Strummer Resource. Archived from the original on 5 October 2011. Retrieved 29 June 2010.
4. https://newrepublic.com/article/113227/bulworth-reviewed

External links

• I Hired a Contract Killer at IMDb
• I Hired a Contract Killer at AllMovie
• I Hired a Contract Killer at the British Board of Film Classification
• I Hired a Contract Killer at the British Film Institute
• I Hired a Contract Killer at Elonet (in Finnish)
• I Hired a Contract Killer at Rotten Tomatoes
• I Hired a Contract Killer at the Swedish Film Institute Database