Bringing It All Back Home

Some days - like today - I feel just like Martin Blank.  As though I've been out in the world lo these many years doing something at odds with who I thought I'd be (in his case, hit man; in mine, software development) and now I have the need to find my way back home.

That the killing is metaphorical for me rather than literal is a minor nitpick; that my wandering in the wilderness has been a helluva lot longer than Martin's 10 years means little more.  His ambivalence (and paradoxically, his compulsion) about the return home feels like me in a way few movie characters and circumstances have to my mind.

The assassin stuff is a just a distraction, it is 'home' itself that's the core conceit and consequently the piece I wrestle with. He's quite literally returning home and I don't even know what that means for me, since I don't think I've ever had one. Not the way he did.  Or rather the way he thinks he did. Still, having never been there doesn't mean I can't yearn to go back.

Maybe returning 'home' is simply getting back to who I wanted to be. Meaning it's okay now to be that person. Maybe that's the point.  Grosse Pointe Blank is nothing if not one metaphor wrapped in another.  In fact, Martin is not 'literally' doing anything (there's at least one subtext and ulterior meaning to every scene).

Reading this over, I see nothing but more of my navel-gazing psycho-babble bullshit.

In the end, maybe it's just a decent shoot-em-up/high school reunion/'love reunited at last' dark romantic comedy.  Plus it has an excellent soundtrack.

Welcome back Pointers.