I’ve never really rated Stephen Frears – he seems mostly to make television movies – very good ones – but television movies nonetheless. Tamara Drewe, which I caught recently at the cinema was a pleasant, vanilla sort of affair, and High Fidelity isn’t really my sort of thing, but The Hit surprised me pleasantly. It reminded me of those more stylish gangster flicks from the 1970s such as Dirty Harry, which had a surprisingly serious, profound tone and a surprisingly poignant ending. The characters in the movie are great, literally bouncing off each other with their totally unique dispositions. John Hurt has always been a favourite of mine and it’s nice to see him play a hardass instead of the underdog, as in Nineteen Eighty Four and The Elephant Man.

Well worth a viewing if you can track down a Region 2 DVD.