Has the balls to ask, "Are you on the same page with yourself?"

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2008)

What do you want to do with your life? Are you really doing it? Or are you just giving lip service to some higher ideal, deluding yourself thinking "someday, maybe," but "not right now?" What excuses are you giving yourself? To be clear, this is primarily an action movie centering around a professional hit-man and his targets. You don't have to entertain these questions to enjoy it.
Yet not since Fight Club's scene in which Brad Pitt holds a gun to that store clerk's head & warns him he'll be dead if he doesn't pursue his dreams, has a movie had the balls to ask -- "Are you on the same page with yourself?"
Again, you don't have to identify with the guy who has the sh**ty job & has a dream to start his own business but never acts on it to appreciate this movie. It stands on it's own as tense, well-acted assassin flick.
But it's rare in that it asks much more of you than to just root for the underdog hero. It gives you pause to reflect.
Granted, addressing the sobering reality that you might in fact be living out an existence that is but a mere shadow of what sort of life you really could be living -- that's not easy to come to terms with. It's much easier to stay plugged in to whatever Matrix you may be living in.
Yet I like challenging movies like this. Along w/ Groundhog Day, Remains of the Day, & Shawshank Redemption, this is among my favorite "wake-up call" how-am-I- living-my-life movies. I think it will be one of those deserving of multiple viewings over the years, one of those I'll probably get something new from every time.
Terrific flick.