I Hired a Contract Killer

Director: Aki Kaurismäki

1990 / 79min / DCP

Freshly unemployed after 15 years at the same civil service post, newly turned 50, and too frightened to put himself out of his misery by his own hand, Jean-Pierre Léaud, a Frenchman living in London, decides to hire a hitman to do the dirty work for him—but this final solution runs into a wrinkle when he rediscovers his will to carry on after falling madly in love, leaving him to scramble to cancel the contract. A deadpan hilarious and disarmingly poignant comedy from Finland's eminent master of the genre, giving Léaud perhaps his finest English-speaking role.

Print courtesy of the Suomen Elokuvasäätiö/The Finnish Film Foundation.