Touches You

So much average

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Do you like classics? Do you have a thing for Hitchcock, or lets say, Jean Pierre Melville? Do you wanna see how does that translate into a more modern progressive movie? Well! here is what you do: You go straight to a club and you purchase 'I Hired a Contract Killer'! It sticks with you; the futility, the humor, and the suspense. This is a picture that no matter what, you gonna remember for ever. The futility is so rich, that itself becomes the core meaning to everything. And the situation gets so baffled that emptiness becomes a survival. The suspension is perfectly 'Hitchcokic'& the use of music is great. It is among the pictures that secures you; makes you sure that still cinema exists; A cinema that tells you a story, a breathtaking one - and damn, Kourismaki is a great story teller; a noble one. One of the few left from the true heritage of motion picture industry and art. Lay back, watch and enjoy. This is pure cinema. As you might have guessed, I fully recommend it!

I watched a documentary about Aki Kaurimaki (one of my favourite directors) in which he stated that he was sick and tired of pages and pages of dialogue he had written ending up on the cutting room floor. So he keeps the dialogue to a minimum. This film is a perfect example of this philosophy. This is Kaurismaki's trademark. Anyone who has seen "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" or "Arial" will recognise his sparing use of dialogue rather than having characters speak just for the sake of speaking. It is no wonder that his most recent film "Juha" was a silent film.This is a very dark and very realistic film about loneliness and depression. All the main characters in the film are lonely people, with very little to live for. Anyone who liked Tom Di Cillo's "Johnny Suede" will find that this is a very film to "I hired a Contract Killer". Personally, I loved this film and would highly recommend it to anyone with an appreciation for fine art house cinema.

I have nothing against slow movies, Kaurism{ki's 'Take care of your scarf Tatjana', being an example of how void and silence (a Finnish trait) can be used to good effect. However, in this case, if the empty parts were extracted from this film, to contract it to about 15 minutes, then it still wouldn't be a good film. It smacks of being nothing more than just an amateurish student project. The acting is wooden, apart from the lead, who just endears himself to the viewer with his depressing delivery to make his role stick out just a little.One for film students to watch and learn from, but not entertainment.

Finnish movies are often blamed (at least by Finns themselves) for containing very weak emotions and total lack of good humor. In my opinion, this movie gives a great deal of both.The main character is an immigrant who loses his job and while swimming in depression, he tries to kill himself (and fails on it, too). The movie gets great after the point where our hero hires an contract killer to kill him. Since his life is already lost (and the killer is going to kill him anytime), he begins to sink more and more into misery just when... he falls in love.Suddenly, life isn't so bad anymore - too bad that the killer is still shadowing him and just trying to finish the contract they've made.I just simply LOVE this movie, it is so funny and yet so good parody about all Finnish customs and traditions.