There’s an old joke that there are more contract killers in movies and TV shows than there are in real life, but it’s easy to see why hitmen have become such a clichéd protagonist for action movies, because it’s a fascinating existence. Killing people for money is a pretty exciting line of work, and it opens itself up to all kinds of moral questions that can deepen a character.
One great example of an action-packed thrill-ride that revolves around a sympathetic assassin is Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional, starring Jean Reno as a brooding hitman, but there are many others.
Léon: The Professional (1994)
Jean Reno stars as the eponymous hitman in Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional. After 12-year-old Mathilda (Natalie Portman) is orphaned by corrupt DEA agents, Léon takes her under his wing and trains her in his trade. This heartfelt dynamic humanizes him.
Reno and Portman’s endlessly likable performances as Léon and Mathilda are brilliantly contrasted with Gary Oldman’s delightfully hateable turn as Norman Stansfield, one of the most sinister villains in action movie history.
Run All Night (2015)
After their success with Unknown and Non-Stop, Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra reteamed to complete their hat-trick with Run All Night, their most action-packed collaboration yet.
Neeson plays an ex-hitman on good terms with a mafia boss whose life is turned upside down when his estranged son provokes the ire of the mob boss’ own son.
Hanna (2011)
Saoirse Ronan stars as a teenage assassin who’s spent her whole childhood training with her father (Eric Bana) to be a killing machine in Hanna. As she goes off on a deadly mission, she’s followed by a CIA agent (Cate Blanchett) and her team.
Interestingly, director Joe Wright helmed the movie more as a dark fairy tale rather than a straight action movie. It’s not strictly fantastical, but it does deal with some of the themes commonly tackled by the fairy tale genre.
In Bruges (2008)
For the most part, Martin McDonagh’s feature directorial debut In Bruges is a darkly comic Waiting for Godot-esque character study exploring the morality of two hitmen as they’re stuck in a real-life limbo. After a botched hit, Ray and Ken are sent to hide out in the eponymous Belgian city while their boss Harry decides their fate.
But since it’s about hitmen, it also has plenty of action. Ray gets into a couple of fights with tourists and the movie culminates in a hilariously self-aware climactic shootout.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
The initial Bourne trilogy is the quintessential tale of a government-indoctrinated assassin using his particular set of skills to turn on that very government.
Matt Damon stars as the titular spy, who is fished out of the ocean and has no idea who he is or how he got there. As he starts digging into his past to figure out his identity, he also finds himself on the run from shady bureaucrats who don’t want him to learn the truth.
Looper (2012)
Before he divided the Star Wars fanbase and reinvented the murder mystery with Knives Out, director Rian Johnson put a sci-fi spin on an assassin movie with the devilishly original futuristic actioner Looper.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a hitman who kills targets that are sent back in time by mobsters in the future. Things get complicated when his latest target is his future self, played by Bruce Willis, and he escapes.
Le Samouraï (1967)
Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Delon collaborated on some of the greatest crime films in the history of French cinema. The one that had the biggest influence on Hollywood action movies was Le Samouraï.
Delon plays a professional killer named Jef Costello, who is spotted by some witnesses and tries to lie his way out of trouble but ends up creating more problems for himself with inconsistent alibis.
Kill List (2011)
The lead protagonist in Ben Wheatley’s Kill List is a ruthless assassin who carries out brutal hits, but he’s also surprisingly sympathetic. He’s an ex-military family man who only resorts to assassinations to provide for his wife and kid.
He finds himself in over his head when he takes the wrong job and the movie devolves into full-on horror as it builds to a haunting finale.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin Tarantino conceived his sophomore directorial effort Pulp Fiction to be, among other things, an urban spaghetti western. The soundtrack is filled with surf rock tracks because Tarantino deemed this subgenre to be the rock ‘n’ roll version of spaghetti western music à la Ennio Morricone.
John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson play a pair of lovable hitmen who are humanized between grisly violent acts with mundane conversations about McDonald’s and foot massages.
John Wick (2014)
The most sympathetic hitman in movie history is the one who shot and stabbed his way through New York’s criminal underworld to avenge the death of his adorable puppy. After the gruesome killing of John Wick’s dog, the audience roots for him to exact revenge in the most violent way possible.
Keanu Reeves brought a real level of pathos to John as a softly spoken widower. No matter how many people he kills with a pencil, he always feels human.