release would have been delayed till summer. That, experience shows, is the proper season for movies built on a foundation of lavish crime, carnage, comedy, chases, crashes and chicks. The Big Hit has all these elements, and none are top-of-the-line. The name of John Woo, the talented Hong Kong-school director of the hit Face/Off, is plastered around The Big Hit. But this bait should not deter the eye from the switch: Woo is an executive producer. The director of The Big Hit is Che-Kirk Wong, another Hong Kong veteran, making his North American debut. Insatiable moviegoers are advised to wait till this action-comedy, written by Ben Ramsey, thuds into video stores; tasteful moviegoers will avoid it altogether." And finally, Jeff Vice of the LDS Church-owned Deseret News remarked: "Every bit as as it is entertaining, this black comedy/thriller takes its plotting and dialogue cues from Tarantino (meaning there is rampant use of profanity) and its startling visual style from Woo, who served as the film's executive producer. Unfortunately, it's a very uneasy blending of the two styles, and as a result there as many awful moments as good ones—at least until the extremely unsatisfying and drawn-out conclusion, which blows things completely." In a retrospective review published in 2010, critic Leonard Maltin praised the film as a guilty pleasure, and said that "most critics despised The Big Hit, and audiences didn't flock to see it, perhaps confused as to whether it was a comedy or an action movie ... and never dreaming it was a hybrid of the two." He also states, "it expands its ideas to such a ludicrous extreme that you can't take it seriously, and that's just what I like about it." It currently holds a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 41 reviews, with an average score of 5.1/10. The site consensus reads: "The Big Hit'' seeks to blend the best of Hong Kong and American action cinema, but ends up offering a muddled mush that mostly misses". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale. References External links 1998 films 1998 action comedy films 1990s heist films American action comedy films American heist films 1990s English-language films Films shot in Hamilton, Ontario TriStar Pictures films Films about contract killing Films scored by Graeme Revell 1990s American films