Review: Hard Contract

James Coburn plays an emotionally barren hitman who lives for the job and is entirely free of personal attachments. Sent to Europe by his bleakly cynical contact (Burgess Meredith), he has three jobs to do, firstly in Spain and then in Brussels. In the former he meets bored jet-setting American Lee Remick, and a relationship starts between the two. He gets the job done nonetheless, but by the time he gets to setting up for the third kill he starts to…have feelings…and questions. Has his experiences with the fun-loving but callous Remick and her bourgeois friends (Lilli Palmer, Claude Dauphin, and Patrick Magee) changed this once ice-cold, efficient killer? Meanwhile, Meredith shows up in Madrid to check that Coburn is getting the job done. Karen Black plays a hooker, and Sterling Hayden plays a farmer and family man, who may be more than just a farmer.

 

Dismissed at the time for the wordy, existential script by writer-director S Lee Pogostin (writer of the appalling “Nightmare Honeymoon”) and for featuring a supposedly miscast James Coburn, this 1969 assassin flick is worth a re-appraisal. The critics were flat-out wrong about Mr. Coburn. In my view, Coburn was the coolest actor to have ever lived so granted, I might be biased here. However, I believe his 98% cold, emotionless performance is the exact performance that the script and film require of him.

 

It’s not the usual grinning, ladies man beatnik performance of Coburn in his Derek Flint brief stay in stardom. Nor is it the John Huston-ish ‘grand old bastard’ villain of his later career. This is a harder-edged Coburn just about in the midst of a transition period in his career, perhaps. He's playing an assassin who has thus far lived a life without the need for emotion or any kind of attachments. He pays for sex, but won’t let the girl stay the night, for instance. After the deed is done, they’ve fulfilled their purpose to him. It’s not perhaps the most exciting performance he’s given, but I found it an interesting break from the Coburn norm nonetheless. Coburn effectively walks the tightrope of playing an emotionless character without giving a boring performance. The film is owned however, by a terrific Lee Remick in one of her best-ever performances. Since Coburn’s not playing a talker in this, Remick is pretty much the opposite, and she starts to soften him up a little over time. She plays a bored socialite who drinks a tad too much, and can be quite rude and rather snippy when she wants to be. She’s especially cruel to ex-Nazi Patrick Magee (in perfect glum form), constantly reminding him of his past and toying with his affection for her seemingly for her own amusement. Magee’s character, in addition to being an ex-Nazi, is also a frankly pathetic man, but Remick really does push his buttons for no good reason. It’s a fascinating character, and frankly not a very likeable one at times, but as with Coburn, Remick just narrowly keeps you on side with the character. The other two standout performances here are from the very unsurprising Burgess Meredith and the rather more surprising Sterling Hayden. Meredith plays Coburn’s employer, a deeply cynical and jaded man whose front is that of a professor. The versatile character actor and veteran scene-stealer is always a joy to watch, and he gets some of the best of the wordy material here as a man who wonders just how amoral killing really is these days. I’ve always taken Sterling Hayden for a bit of a block of wood, but he too gets a good role here, though you’ll have to wait until the film is nearly over to see him. Equipped with an Amish beard, he’s really good playing one of the more interesting characters in the film. I’ll leave you to discover who and what he’s all about. On the downside, Claude Dauphin is utterly wasted as an associate of Remick’s. You wouldn’t miss him if he weren’t in the film, and the film really is a tad overpopulated. Lilli Palmer and the usually terrible Karen Black are fine though, in fact Black has never been better in my view as a hooker at the beginning of the film.

 

According to Coburn himself, the director was a better writer and the actors tended to direct themselves. The director’s unwillingness to alter his very wordy script is often seen as a reason for the film’s box-office failure. I don’t think it’s the words that are the problem. I think it’s the abundance of characters, a couple of whom could’ve easily been excised altogether to make a much tighter film. I’m also not entirely sure that I buy the film’s happy ending. I think it should’ve delivered the same idea a little more subtly than it ultimately does. I guess that’s what happens when the writer is a first-time director, though.

 

More Le Carré than Derek Flint, I think there’s an audience for this interesting, if flawed film. I’m not sure if that audience is even aware that the film exists, but I hope it does get some what of a re-appraisal because there’s some good elements here. The performances are terrific, especially Lee Remick and Burgess Meredith. James Coburn meanwhile is underrated, and there’s some interesting things being pondered here about violence and killing. Give this one a chance.

 

Rating: B-