Killshot (2008)

Blackbird (Mickey Rourke) is a contract killer on the outs with his boss in the Toronto Mafia. So when he gets temporarily carjacked by hyped-up idiot Richie (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who claims he's intimidated a local real estate bigwig into coughing up 20 grand, he rolls with it. Besides, the idiot reminds him of his dead younger brother.

Unfortunately, the bigwig's not in his office, but an unemployed welder looking for a career change (Thomas Jane) is, and he chucks the tweaked-out moron out the window. And his ex-wife (Diane Lane) who is a realtor, sees Blackbird's face. So it's into witness protection for them, in Cape Girardeau, no less. I remember, years ago, the guys in the comic store talking about a movie being filmed down by the river. Guess this was it.

To Batman, criminals may be a superstitious, cowardly lot. In Elmore Leonard's world, they're just dumb as hell. Richie no patience, no control, no powers of observation. He brags about robbing a bank for $2,700, or about killing a guy running the register at a gas station, when all these things do is emphasize how stupid and small his "ideas" are.

For all that Blackbird stands quietly a lot or talks about rules, all he's got is one dead brother, another in prison for life, a boss pissed Blackbird killed his side piece, and a blue Cadillac he has to burn after Richie's poorly thought out plan goes pear-shaped. He's more patient, but his self-control and judgment clearly aren't much better. He has to figure sleeping with Richie's girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) is a bad idea, but he does it anyway. He has to know sticking with Richie at all is a bad idea, better to kill him and go solo. But he's trying to make up for past mistakes and does it anyway.

I did want to know why Blackbird didn't want his grandmother to make him an owl, and wanted to be a blackbird instead. I assume there was some significance to the difference, but he never explains that.

Land and Jane are stuck with the less-interesting tasks of being an estranged couple thrown into this mess together. They've tried to have the "normal" life that Richie and Blackbird have either eschewed or simply gone too far afield to have, but it hasn't really worked out. Jane didn't want their marriage to end because he thought it was doing OK, but Lane disagrees, but she still calls him when she's having problems, but she doesn't want him to have a key to the house any longer. He sees the relocation as a chance to start over, she just wants to go home.

So Jane walks and stands with an air of perpetual frustration, like he wants to explode but won't let himself. Diane Lane seems like she's always two seconds from bursting into tears, which she actually does in the first scene where we see her, so I guess that's the effect she was going for.