Contract killing in popular culture

Fictional cases of contract killing or "hitmen"–murderers who are hired to kill an individual or group–are depicted in a range of popular fiction genres in the 20th and 21st century, including films, comic books and video games.

Animation/Cartoons/Comics

In Adventure Time, the Ice King hires an assassin thinking that a hitman only "hits" people and doesn't kill them. Throughout the episode, the Ice King prevents the hitman from killing Finn and Jake (who think the Ice King was the one trying to kill them).
In Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, a character named Muddy Grimes mistakenly hires Beavis and Butt-Head, thinking they are the two hitmen he was supposed to meet to kill his wife Dallas.
In Darker than Black, the main character often performs contract killings for various organizations.
In Dragon Ball, a mercenary named Tao Pai Pai is hired by the Red Ribbon Army to kill Goku.
In Fate/Zero, the main character is a contract hitman and skilled mercenary.
In Golgo 13, the main character, Duke Togo or "Golgo 13", is a reputed marksman and an unnaturally quick draw who prefers taking his targets with a heavily modified M-16.
In Gungrave, the main character is a hitman for the Mafia.
The titular character of Hitman (Tommy Monaghan) is a super powered hitman in the DC Comics Universe. The character was created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea and first appeared in The Demon Annual No. 2 and then received his own series by Ennis and McCrea, which lasted 60 issues.
In Missing Link, Lord Piggot-Dunceby hires a bounty hunter named Willard Stenk to kill Sir Lionel Frost to take down the adventure.
In the manga Monster, one of the main antagonists, Roberto, is a professional hitman and the loyalist of Johan Liebert.
Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom is about a trained assassin, Zwei, and his mentor, Ein, who wish to escape from Inferno.
Reborn! contains several hitmen, including Reborn, "Lambo" and others. Tsuna Sawada (the main character), along with his school friends, are trained by a hitman to succeed the previous Vongola Family.
In Samurai Jack, Aku developed the births of Daughters of Aku and The High Priestess hires them to kill Samurai Jack.
In Shrek 2, King Harold hires a professional assassin named Puss in Boots to kill Shrek so Prince Charming can marry Princess Fiona.
In the South Park episode "Follow That Egg!", Mrs. Garrison hires a hitman to "kill" an egg because she fears it will lead the governor to legalize same-sex marriage in the state after being rejected by his ex-lover following a sex-change operation.
In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Sheldon J. Plankton hires a hitman named Dennis to kill SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star to stop them from retrieving the crown of King Neptune.
In the X-kai, Kaito Yagami is a hitman by night and runs a flower shop during the day.

Live-action series

In Killing Eve, psychopathic assassin Villanelle is hunted by MI5
In Sons of Anarchy and its spinoff, Mayans M.C., Happy Lowman is frequently used to carry out hits
In Boardwalk Empire, World War I veteran Richard Harrow works as a hitman for his employers.
Almost every episode of Queen of the South features sicarios (hitmen) - and hits being ordered and carried out
In Peaky Blinders Aberama Gold and his clan of gypsies work as free lance assassins.

Live-action films

Crime and action genres

Notable fictional contract killers or "hitmen" in crime films and action films include:

Jack Palance's hitman character pursues Robert Mitchum and Linda Darnell's characters in the film Second Chance (1953).
Lee Marvin plays a hitman in the film The Killers (1964).
Various hitman characters were depicted in 1970s films, in part due to the trend of making Mafia-themed movies like The Godfather (1972).
Charles Bronson plays a master hitman and Jan-Michael Vincent his protege-in-training in the film The Mechanic (1972).
- Jason Statham plays the contract killer in the remake The Mechanic (2011)
The actor Edward Fox plays the role of a killer who methodically plans a "hit" on Charles de Gaulle, President of France, in the film The Day of the Jackal (1973).
- In a similarly named film, Bruce Willis also portrays an assassin using the codename The Jackal (1997).
The character played by Max Von Sydow is a hired hitman in the film Three Days of the Condor (1974).
Henry Silva plays a hitman in the film Sharky's Machine (1981).
The James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), depicts the fictional character Francisco Scaramanga, a high-priced hitman. Scaramanaga, who is said to be the best in the world in his trade, uses bullets made of gold in a fictitious, 4.2 mm cartridge.
The finale of Scarface (1983) depicts a group of hitmen hired to kill the protagonist, the Cuban gang leader Tony Montana.
The film Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) depicts the moral dilemma of an ophthalmologist who hires a hitman to kill his mistress.
Jean Reno portrayed a charismatic hitman in Léon: The Professional (1994).
In Robert Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy, the main protagonist, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas, formerly Carlos Gallardo), is a gunslinger who also works as a hitman.
Tom Hanks plays a mob hitman in 1930s Chicago and Jude Law plays a rival killer in the film Road to Perdition (2002)
The film Killer Elite (2011), starring Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro, depicts group of hitmen, with Statham and De Niro portraying the main killers.
Timothy Olyphant's movie, Hitman (2007), is based on the eponymous video game.
In the film Collateral, Tom Cruise plays an amoral hitman who takes a cabbie (Jamie Foxx) hostage for five stops to assassinate five witnesses in an organized crime trial, to prevent them from testifying.
In the film Killing Them Softly (2012), Brad Pitt plays an assassin named Jackie Cogan who is hired to kill the robbers of a mob-controlled poker game.
In the biographical crime film The Iceman (2012), Michael Shannon portrays notorious hitman Richard Kuklinski who earned the nickname "The Iceman" for freezing the body of one of his victims in an attempt to disguise the time of death.
In the Science fiction film Outland (1981) two hitmen are sent to kill Marshal William T O'Niel (Sean Connery) when he interferes with a corrupt administrator's drug dealing ring.
George Clooney plays a hitman in the film The American (2010)
In the John Wick franchise, Keanu Reeves plays a legendary hitman whose penchant for revenge causes him to leave retirement.
The film Sicario (2015) and it's sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018), Benicio del Toro's character, Alejandro Gillick, is an ex lawyer who now works for the CIA as a hitman, battling drug cartels. Sicario literally means "hitman", in the context of Latin American drug cartels.
In the 2015 film Hitman: Agent 47, Rupert Friend portrays Agent 47, a hitman who works for the ICA (International Contracts Agency). The role was previously portrayed by Timothy Olyphant in 2007, but was later rebooted.
In the 2008 film Iron Man, Jeff Bridges plays Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark's business partner, who orders a hit on Stark by hiring terrorists to kill him, part of a plot to take over Stark Industries. However, the terrorists spare Tony and ask for more money when they realise who Stark is.

Offbeat portrayals

"Offbeat" portrayals from the mid-1990s to the 2000s include:

John Cusack plays a hitman named Martin Blank who attends his high school reunion in the comedy film Grosse Pointe Blank (1997).
In the political satire film War, Inc. (2008), Cusack plays Brand Hauser, a hitman posing as a trade show producer.
Forest Whitaker portrayed a hitman influenced by Bushidō warriors in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).
In the black comedy The Matador (2005), Pierce Brosnan portrays an experienced hitman who suffers a mental breakdown, causing him to freeze during the last seconds of the contract killing he was hired for.
Bill Hader, in the TV series Barry, follows a contract killer attempting to start a new life as an actor.
In the film Panic (2000), Alex (William H. Macy) plays a reluctant hit man who works with his father, Michael (Donald Sutherland); when Alex discusses with his psychotherapist (John Ritter) his desire to quit the "family business", Michael orders Alex to kill his psychotherapist

More rarely, romantic comedies have used light-hearted depictions of assassins, e.g.:

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt star as husband and wife assassins in the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005).
Ashton Kutcher plays an assassin-for-hire in the film Killers (2010).
Bruce Willis portrays a contract killer, Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski, in the film The Whole Nine Yards (2000) and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards (2004). His love interest, Jill (played by Amanda Peet), joins him in "the business".

Award-winning portrayals

Portrayals of hitmen that have earned major nominations or awards include:

In 1985, Jack Nicholson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a hitman named Charley Partanna in Prizzi's Honor (1985).
In 1994, both John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson were nominated for Academy Awards for Best actor and Best Actor in a Supporting Role respectively for their portrayals of two hitmen in the film Pulp Fiction (1994).
In the Coen Brothers' Academy Award-winning film, No Country for Old Men (2007), Javier Bardem played a ruthless assassin named Anton Chigurh in search of a lost cache of money.

Tragic or solitary portrayal

Internationally, the vision of the hitman is often one of a tragic individual with a solitary existence:

In the French film, Le Samouraï (1967), Jef Costello is an example of this.
The film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), which was shot in New Jersey but never mentions where the story is set, takes inspiration from this "solitary" depiction.
In the French film Léon: The Professional (1994), Léon's existence outside of hits revolves around his houseplant and watching old films.
In the Hong Kong thriller film, The Killer (1989), the main character, Ah Jong, attempts to perform one last hit as a means of setting right an injustice that he had previously caused.

Video games

The Ace Attorney series features two fictional assassins (Shelly De Killer and Ryoken Hoinbo), specifically in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All and Ace Attorney Investigations 2.
In Cause of Death, several characters, most notably The Ghost (featured in Volumes 2, 8, and 13), are assassins (who often also act as bodyguards).
All of the Elder Scrolls games since Daggerfall feature the "Dark Brotherhood", a group of hired assassins. Groups like the Morag Tong also perform contract killings in the series and have been a playable faction in Morrowind. However, unlike the Dark Brotherhood, the Morag Tong is a legal assassination group in the province of Morrowind and plays a more justice-oriented role.
In the Grand Theft Auto series, the main character is given tasks akin to acting as a hitman, e.g., in Grand Theft Auto IV Niko Bellic is frequently hired as a hitman.
The fictional main character of the video game series Hitman was genetically engineered by a man called Dr. Ort-Meyer in an insane asylum in Romania. He is known only as Agent 47. 47 is so highly regarded in the criminal underworld that many consider him to be a myth. The gameplay revolves around infiltrating an area, executing a target (or targets), and escaping without apprehension. Although it isn't compulsory, the Hitman games encourage the player to use stealth and cunning maneuvers to eliminate targets, as opposed to making use of pure firepower. The seventh game in the series, Hitman 2, was released on November 13, 2018.
In Killer is Dead, the main character Mondo Zappa works for Brian's Execution Firm and is hired to kill several strange targets.
In Super Mario Odyssey, Bowser hires the Broodals to kill Mario so he can marry Princess Peach.
In Welcome to the Game 2, the player is constantly being hunted by Lucas Kumiega, a Polish hitman who has, for unknown reasons, been hired to assassinate Clint Edwards, the protagonist.

References

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