My Com­fort Blan­ket Movie: Grosse Pointe Blank

There are some films you watch when you need a warm hug from a famil­iar source. There’s no new ter­rain to explore, no out­side world, no alarms and no sur­pris­es – they are sim­ply sooth­ing. Since a glob­al pan­dem­ic was declared on 11 March, dai­ly life has become so strange that the solace offered by com­fort blan­ket movies is enhanced. In this series, we want to cel­e­brate them, in what­ev­er form they take.

There’s cool, there’s super­cool, and then there’s John Cusack and Min­nie Dri­ver in Grosse Pointe Blank. Him as Mar­tin, a pro­fes­sion­al assas­sin with scru­ples; her as Debi, a local radio DJ with a pen­chant for ​’80s alt-rock. For me, and I sus­pect for many oth­ers of my gen­er­a­tion, they are the ulti­mate on-screen pair­ing – up there with Bogie and Bacall, Delon and Vit­ti, Ford and Fish­er. When­ev­er I watch the film, I can’t help but fall in love with them all over again. They seduce me in that way that great movie stars do.

But their easy charm and scin­til­lat­ing chem­istry isn’t the main rea­son why I love this film, or why I keep com­ing back to it. The rea­son I feel such a strong con­nec­tion to Grosse Pointe Blank, and what qual­i­fies it as a com­fort blank movie, is that it reminds me of a sim­ple truth about life, which is that noth­ing real­ly changes. We may grow up, move away, get jobs, get mar­ried, have chil­dren, yet the ideas we form about our­selves at an ear­ly age remain con­stant. This is not to say that peo­ple are inca­pable of mod­i­fy­ing their behav­iour or bet­ter­ing them­selves; sim­ply that at a cer­tain point our per­son­al­i­ties are shaped and become fixed. I’m dif­fer­ent from how I was the first time I watched Grosse Pointe Blank (20 years old­er for starters), but I’m the same me.

Let me back­track a sec­ond. I came to Grosse Pointe Blank rel­a­tive­ly late, hav­ing been too young in 1997 to see it at the cin­e­ma. Every Sun­day in my home­town there was a car boot sale not far from where we lived, and once a month we would go down and peruse the odd junk and occa­sion­al trea­sure clut­ter­ing the rows of fold­ing tables and plas­tic crates. With the mon­ey I had saved from my paper round, I would make a bee­line for a hand­ful of sell­ers flog­ging sec­ond-hand VHS tapes, pick­ing out the titles and cas­es that caught my eye. One Sun­day morn­ing, I part­ed with my hard-earned coin for a copy of Grosse Pointe Blank, not recog­nis­ing the cou­ple on the cov­er but imme­di­ate­ly under­stand­ing that they were extreme­ly cool.

The words ​‘Grosse’, ​‘Pointe’ and ​‘Blank’ arranged in this way con­fused and com­pelled me. It was only upon view­ing the film that I dis­cov­ered the title refers to a city in Amer­i­ca, where our sweet­hearts are reunit­ed. Much lat­er, I won­dered if it was pos­si­bly a nod to John Boorman’s 1967 crime noir, Point Blank. Indeed, Mar­tin Blank is in many ways a male anti-hero in the Lee Mar­vin mould: a trig­ger-hap­py, tac­i­turn lon­er seek­ing reward and redemp­tion, scorned by his own insou­ciance. Vio­lent and self-destruc­tive but attrac­tive all the same.

There’s a moment in Grosse Pointe Blank where Mar­tin says, ​“I’ve always felt very tem­po­rary about myself,” and I can relate to that, in that I’m not some­one who is inclined to think­ing too deeply about who I am, where I’ve come from, or where I’m going. The one thing Mar­tin is firm on is his love for Debi, and even though he leaves it late to make a prop­er com­mit­ment to her, that’s all that counts. Even though a lot of time has passed, they still feel the same way about each other.

What I find so com­fort­ing about this film is the notion that for all the mess­es and mis­takes we make, all the harm we do to each oth­er, peo­ple are capa­ble of immense empa­thy because we implic­it­ly recog­nise the flaws and weak­ness­es that are wired into each and every one of us. For bet­ter and worse, peo­ple don’t change; if you tru­ly care about some­one then it doesn’t matter.

Grosse Pointe Blank also con­tains a bril­liant cri­tique of mod­ern mas­culin­i­ty: specif­i­cal­ly of the type of out­ward­ly self-con­fi­dent man who treats his penis like a weapon and freaks out when things get seri­ous. It’s no coin­ci­dence that Martin’s way of deal­ing with the fear and inse­cu­ri­ty that led him to aban­don Debi on prom night is to become a lit­er­al gun for hire.

In truth, nei­ther has moved on from those heady high school days. Despite now being in their late twen­ties, it seems as though Mar­tin and Debi nev­er grad­u­at­ed. They are trapped in a time cap­sule of their youth, cir­ca 1986. That they pick up where they left off roman­ti­cal­ly is large­ly down to Debi’s matu­ri­ty and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, but it’s plain to see that Martin’s betray­al has stunt­ed her devel­op­ment too. It’s telling that she is still liv­ing in the same dead-end town, still at home (albeit tem­porar­i­ly), and earn­ing a liv­ing play­ing songs almost exclu­sive­ly from the same peri­od as her trau­mat­ic jilting.

Grosse Pointe Blank is a film I’ve revis­it­ed spo­rad­i­cal­ly over the years, usu­al­ly with friends who share my fond­ness for The Spe­cials and sophis­ti­cat­ed ​’90s rom-coms. The fourth time I saw it was on a stag do. (Suf­fice it to say it was the most whole­some activ­i­ty on the day’s itin­er­ary.) My for­mer boss – the eli­gi­ble bach­e­lor of the hour – rent­ed out what was then the Aubin & Wills cin­e­ma in Shored­itch and request­ed a copy of the film from the dis­trib­u­tors to screen for the par­ty. Amaz­ing­ly, they sent not a DVD but a crisp 35mm print held over from its orig­i­nal the­atri­cal run. So I final­ly got to see it on the big screen.

Watch­ing it again on my own recent­ly, it was intense­ly sooth­ing to catch up with Cusack and Dri­ver, not to men­tion Alan Arkin (as Martin’s belea­guered ther­a­pist), Joan Cusack (as his mani­a­cal PA) and Dan Aykroyd (as his clown­ish fren­e­my). The deep cuts on the sound­track, and how per­fect­ly they’re matched to what’s hap­pen­ing on screen (The Jam’s ​‘Absolute Begin­ners’ when Mar­tin and Debi see each oth­er for the first time in 10 years; The Bur­ros’ ​‘Lit­tle Lux­u­ries’ when he enters her child­hood bed­room), get me every time. But what struck me most was the feel­ing that no mat­ter where we go or what we become, some things stay exact­ly the same. That’s just the way it’s meant to be.