Dusk For A Hitman will be released On Digital, and On Demand on April 19 from Saban Films.
For those of you gravitate to the true crime story end of the genre, it’ll behoove you to take a gander at Dusk For A Hitman. Raymond St-Jean directs from a script he wrote with Martin Girard, casting Éric Bruneau for the lead of the late 70s-set drama about an underworld hitman, and the inevitable choice he’ll have to make if he’s to save the ones he loves.
That impasse is set by a flurry of violent events spearheaded in the dark crime tale by hitman career criminal and drug addict, Donald Lavoie (Bruneau). His job entails either collecting or assassinating people who flake on payments. Imaginably, his lifestyle is also a bit of a balancing act between working for leading crime boss Claude Dubois (Benoît Gouin), and playing loving father and husband to wife, Francine (Rose-Marie Perreault).
The first major kerfuffle occurs long after Donald shoots several people near the top of the film. The incident is also ancillary to the many building blocks already being gathered as part of an investigation by the head of the local task force, Burns (Sylvain Marcel).
Crucial to the story here is the wobbly relationship Donald shares with brother Carl (Simon Landry-Désy), whose hairtrigger temper often forces Donald to set boundaries on the job. Further complicating things is when Dubois decides he’s had enough of having too many people doing business in the bigwig’s clubs. Ultimately, that includes repeat offender Carl, with Donald forced to take matters in his own hands.
The tagline for Dusk For A Hitman becomes key in understanding what happens next as the story unfolds within the span of a year. In sum, pressures of all of Donald’s crimes are finally starting to weigh heavily on him and his embattled marriage. The added danger of losing the father figure he once had in Dubois is the proverbial cherry on top that encapsulates Donald’s more introspective moments, commencing a transformative segue in the story – it is not because he’s repentant. That much is clear.
Dusk For A Hitman treads carefully in brisk and crucial moments of Donald’s criminal lifestyle, all leading up to the signature inevitable. The most interesting part of this phase is the stark contrast made by Burns in a key scene, in which he describes how the laws work between Canada and the U.S.. It’s an addendum to a brutal, bloody and sometimes grisly crime drama that subtly underscores that for the notorious killer, no matter the greys or any applied nuance one might have about him or his circumstances, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
St-Jean crafts a lean, slow-burn, haunting look at a man hired to do pure evil, and ultimately forced to look past his coke-highs and truly see what he’s become. For this, Dusk For A Hitman leaves all the room needed for the audience to decide how it feels about the man and his so-called legacy. St-Jean’s smart directing and co-writing are plusses here, with a performance by Bruneau that certainly lends something compelling and worthwhile to discuss among cinephiles.
