Blackmailing the Hitman

Grace Quigley (1984) – An elderly woman witnesses a hit, then blackmails the hitman to help her with a business proposition for older folks who have had enough of life.

Directed by Anthony Harvey

Starring Katharine Hepburn, Nick Nolte

Why I Liked It – Even with a less than perfect script, Hepburn and Nolte are worth watching.

Another movie I’ve never heard of that I watched because of the names on the marquee. Hepburn is one of the greatest actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Nolte flashed hot and cold throughout his career. He could be so brilliant, but then turn in lackluster performances. The rest of the cast is made up of decent, if unknown, character actors. The two stars together seem like a very interesting combination. Mostly, they are.

The story is straightforward. Grace (Hepburn) sees her landlord killed by Seymour Flint, a low-level hitman who struggles with the mental impact of his job. With a life reduced to little more that drudgery, Grace is ready to move on to whatever comes next. Flint seems like the perfect solution, and she has leverage. Her persistence in pushing him back into a life he’s working to escape frustrates him. When Grace sees that many of her friends feel the same way, she sees both a new purpose for her life and a business opportunity. Before he knows it, Flint has a waiting list of customers. The story alternates between being sweet, silly and sad. The two develop an affection for each other, which develops into familial connections.

The problem here is the script for me. Both Hepburn in her final big screen role and Nolte, who was struggling with alcoholism at the time of the filming, are more than adequate. Anthony Harvey had worked with his female star before, in the brilliant “The Lion in Winter”. Eleanor of Aquitaine may be my favorite Katharine Hepburn performance of them all. The foundation of a good movie is all there. But it comes up a bit short for me. The script carries the basics of black comedy well enough, but some transitions don’t feel smooth or natural to me. Flint eventually comes to feel like Grace’s son, and Grace reciprocates, but it didn’t feel like that relationship was developed properly. It drops out of the blue. The same for Flint’s psychological crisis at the end of the movie.

Speaking of the end, the ending that we see today was not in the original script. That ending was decidedly more bittersweet, but test audiences hated it. Instead, we are left with a sweet, Hollywood ending that never feels satisfying.

What are we left with? A better than average black comedy with solid performances by the two leads. A certain nostalgia gets attached to this one because it was Katharine Hepburn’s last big screen role, but fans would be better served remembering her stunning turn in her next-to-last movie, “On Golden Pond”. Or “The Lion in Winter” or “The African Queen” or most of the rest of her filmography. There’s no shame in having this movie as a credit, but it’s not Hepburn at her finest.

The good parts are more than good enough, and there’s plenty of them here.

You can stream “Grace Quigley” on Tubi, Amazon Prime, MGM+, YouTube, YouTubeTV, Fubo TV, Sling TV, The Roku Channel, Philo

Rating – *** Worth A Look