Great Scenes… Grosse Pointe Blank
A gun in a brown bag, omelette technicalities and jokes about dead dogs. John Cusack and Dan Ackroyd sit down for breakfast. Pull up a chair.
The humble diner is the setting of many a great scene in American cinema and they don’t come much funnier, or cooler, than this segment from the terrific Grosse Pointe Blank. George Armitage’s 1997 film is an action movie, a high school reunion flick and a romance rolled into one big fun-packed ball, complete with rapid-fire dialogue and the quintessential John Cusack performance.
Thankfully for us, Cusack’s anxious hitman Martin Q Blank is given a great foil in Dan Ackroyd’s Grocer, who just wants to do two things in life: kill people and have a union where people who kill people can talk about how they kill people. But Blank isn’t buying it, and in this very funny head-to-head he explains why: ‘Loner. Lone gunman, geddit?’
Not only is this scene a rib-tickler, it also gives us an insight into how highly strung you can become if you choose to murder people for a living. There is an uneasy kinship between Blank and Grocer as they discuss other hitmen (Ackroyd’s phrasing of ‘some Basque-whacker from the Pyrenees’ is beautiful) and what drugs they have been prescribed to keep them focused.
It’s the little details that make it interesting, from Grocer forlornly leaning his head against the wall to his very graphic description of what he would insert in the hole in Blank’s head after he has put a bullet through it. The performances are perfect and the dialogue is brilliant. Nice talk, sugar mouth.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SCENE FROM GROSSE POINTE BLANK?
Ross v Ross 
August 18, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Yep great scene from a great movie!
August 19, 2009 at 3:35 am
Popcorn!
August 22, 2009 at 3:28 am
The whole string of scenes when Martin’s protecting Debi and her dad from his colleagues at Debi’s house and, of course:
THE ULTIMART EXPLOSION! (NICE usage of Motorhead’s ‘Ace Of Spades’)
August 22, 2009 at 10:00 am
here you are LaurieStrode, just for you – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZt0fAZ018E
August 23, 2009 at 10:28 am
The fight scene between Cusack and the assassin in the school hallway while MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM by THE ENGLISH BEAT is playing in the background. It provides such a great rhythm to a well-choreographed fight scene.
Favourite line: “I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork.”
August 24, 2009 at 7:58 am
I love how whenever Martin’s about to kill someone and they plead, he says “it’s not me”. Any scene between Martin and his psychiatrist cracks me up.
Favourite line of mine: “If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.”
August 28, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Awesome movie. Great premise, and Dan Aykroyd, man. Elwood fuckin’ Blues.