The Big Hit Took Pride in Its Over-The-Top, Just-Plain-Wrong Trashiness

Here’s a true story: I was at my nearby Blockbuster Video one Friday night, looking for something to tide me over for the weekend. As I was at the counter with my selections, a tape slipped into the outside return slot. One of the employees picked it up and it was The Big Hit. When the employer popped the case open to see if it was rewound, he said, “Look what they did!” and showed it to everyone around the counter, including me. Just what did they do? Someone wrote “The Big Shit” in Sharpie on the front label.
As a person who saw the movie (twice?!) when it first hit theaters, it’s understandable why someone would decide to leave that message. Released 25 years ago this month, The Big Hit is probably one of the most reprehensible action-comedies to come out of the ‘90s. It’s offensive on so many levels. It’s violent, crass, juvenile, rabidly misogynistic, slightly anti-Semitic and downright stupid.
So, why the hell am I writing a tribute piece about this?
Released during a time when most of America was trying to fight off this new thing called political correctness, The Big Hit was just one of many gleefully objectionable, R-rated actioners that studios gave lofty budgets to back in the day. (See any Jerry Bruckheimer-produced summer blockbuster of that decade.) And The Big Hit is a movie that practically takes pride in its over-the-top, just-plain-wrong trashiness.
Mark Wahlberg, fresh off his star-making turn as porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, leads the cast as the ironically named Melvin Smiley. He’s part of a crew of contract killers that include wannabe gangster Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips, really working the blaccent), pretty boy Vince (Antonio Sabàto Jr., who’s really only in the movie for a few scenes) and resident Black guy Crunch (Bokeem Woodbine), who recently discovered how awesome masturbation is.
Wahlberg’s Maalox-guzzling protagonist is something of a paradox: an expert assassin who’s also a doormat. He’s been bleeding money thanks to his fiancée (Christina Applegate, going full Jewish American Princess), who gave a hefty loan to her stereotypically Jewish parents (Elliott Gould and Lainie Kazan), and his two-timing, gold-digging mistress (Lela Rochon). Even Cisco guilt-trips him out of the $25,000 bonus Melvin gets after taking out a target. Wahlberg does this in an stylishly shot yet utterly ridiculous sequence which has him wiping out goons while spinning around in the air, on the floor and even on stair railings.
Strapped for cash, Melvin gets involved in a kidnapping scheme Cisco cooks up, where they kidnap a businessman’s daughter (model China Chow, making her film debut) for a million-dollar ransom. Not only do they not know that the businessman (Sab Shimono) is bankrupt after starring and directing in a big-budget, box-office bomb (the movie’s title is Taste the Golden Spray—I shit you not!), but the daughter is also the goddaughter of their own boss (a scowling Avery Brooks).