Down on his luck Allan Campbell (Cole Hauser), betrayed by his girlfriend Sydney (Ginny Weirick) who is cheating on him with his best friend Mike Dodd (Drew Waters, unappreciated at work by his boss who handed Brian Felzner (Sean Cook) the promotion he believes was his leads him to a bar where he can drown his sorrows with liquor. He meets Jonas Arbor (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who at first seems to be just a random guy at the bar, but once he begins telling him he is a gun for hire, Allan “plays” along and adds five names to a hit list. Little did he know that Jonas was not in a mood for playing and perhaps Allan’s doing is going to bring some pain to others?
Talk about a premise of film that sounds interesting, but the execution was just done completely wrong. Originally when I first saw the trailer I thought there was something familiar about the film. It’s like I had seen something identical I just couldn’t put the pieces together. When I watched the film I could similarities with other similar films and even thought to myself how many different movies this movie was pieced together with. The Hit List tried to borrow pieces from other movies and it just didn’t pan out as planned.
As much as I would like enjoy the film, it is just simply not possible. As if Cuba Gooding Jr.’s best years were yesterday, he has been involved with a few direct to video that have been less than pleasant. The Hit List just adds to the list. I can’t put the entire blame on him or some of the cast for how the film turned out. The screenplay was just bad, the writing was subpar and with that is difficult to ask for great performances. I am still trying to figure out why Jonas given such wisdom and let alone the corny quotes. The script was just bad with Gooding and Hauser delivering their lines without any sort of emotion or as if they were just reading them off a card. The same goes for other characters that just have no emotion or just simply are bad. I wish there was something to salvage but there isn’t.
The Hit List arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p MPEG4-AVC encode framed at 1.78:1. For the most part Sony did a decent job with this release, but ultimately not an impressive transfer. Colors look good in some scenes, but in others there’s they appear washed out. Detailing is great with a clean and clear image. Skintones appear natural throughout. Black levels are well reproduced, but the same issue as the coloring, some scenes feature lackluster black colors. Overall, The Hit List looks decent on Blu-ray.
The Hit list arrives on Blu-ray with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio lossless track. Dialogue is perfectly reproduced throughout. The LFE output is always providing great support during shootouts and car chases. The surrounds are almost non-existent as they fail to provide any sort of immersion. The soundfield suffers from the lack of surround activity. The whole affair is predominantly frontal with good directionality in the front three speakers. The Hit List sounds decent on Blu-ray.
Only a few movie previews and BD-Live are available as “supplements”.
Somewhere down the line someone must of thought of the idea of putting this movie together and possibly it would had worked out if it didn’t have such bad writing. The entire cast was bad, emotionless, and lacking of effort I mean can you really imagine your wife not reacting when you tell her that you (her husband) have placed her on a list to get killed. The Blu-ray offers a decent video and audio quality and no supplements. I would probably recommend you to skip this title on the grounds that is just bad.
