Killer Role For Cusack ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ A Hit-Man Story Without The Sadistic, Nonchalant Violence

As one-joke shaggy-dog stories go, George Armitage’s “Grosse Pointe Blank” is a lot better than it has any business being.

The film has hit potential, thanks to the star-caliber romantic pairing of John Cusack and Minnie Driver. And the collaborative screenplay (Cusack also gets a writer credit) is rich with smart, spontaneous dialogue.

Such qualities - plus Dan Aykroyd’s finest comic-villain portrayal in years - go far toward overcoming a basic moral quandary:

The film sympathizes so deeply with a professional killer that the audience may find itself balking. The customers who play along with the scam will probably enjoy it.

This is nothing like the full-bore sadistic horrors of “Pulp Fiction” (1994), where murder happens so matter-of-factly that terror blurs into numb absurdity. “Grosse Pointe Blank” is a middling fresh, moderately restrained take on the old standby of the likable (or at least interesting) hit man.

The new film does, however, make a point of demolishing a “Pulp Fiction” video-store display in a shootout scene.

Martin Blank (Cusack), pushing 30 and at risk of career burnout, accepts a contract hit in Detroit and decides to drop in on his high-school reunion as long as he’s in the neighborhood.

He often dreams of revisiting the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe - where, Kerouac insisted, “There’s no tragedy.” But it has been so long since Martin has even been in touch that he is dumbfounded to find a convenience grocery standing where his childhood home used to be.

His high-school sweetheart (Driver), now a local radio personality, is still pretty much as he had left her - abandoned her, rather - and though overjoyed to see him, she cannot resist humiliating him on the air.

Meanwhile, a rival assassin (Aykroyd) is dogging Blank’s tracks, along with two government operatives (Michael Cudlitz and K. Todd Freeman) who cannot decide whether they’re the good guys or the bad guys.

Anyone who has followed this type of fiction will smell the “big revelation” coming miles away, but predictability is not the point.

The overriding pleasures include the lustrous chemistry between a wide-eyed Cusack and a wary Driver; the comparative restraint with which director Armitage stages the necessarily violent encounters; and Aykroyd’s boisterous portrayal of a two-gun maniac who has no qualms about his career.

Plot holes that might disable some other movie seem almost irrelevant here. Blank’s childhood must have been an ordeal, but only tantalizing hints are dropped.

The delightfully plain-spoken Joan Cusack, has the film all to herself in several scenes, holding down the fort at Martin Blank’s have-gun-will-travel agency.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Grosse Pointe Blank” Location: Lyons Credits: Directed by George Armitage, starring John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Joan Cusack Rating: R