Murder by Contract Reviews

While watching Columbia Noir on the Criterion Channel, I found that Murder by Contract snuck up on me with the biggest punch. Lean, mean, and enthralling, Murder by Contract is a nasty little B-movie that attacks you with more artistry and firepower than some of its more stuffy, canonized siblings. There’s an air of cool here that wouldn’t be replicated again until Le Samourai, Jean-Pierre Melville’s neo-noir.

There’s also a clear line between this and something like Taxi Driver as the main character isolates himself, commits to a vigorous training regime, and develops an ideology of the world needing purifying in some manner. The difference is that Taxi Driver’s character operated from a perverse viewpoint that placed him as the hero of his narrative. The heir apparent to the lone rangers of numerous westerns. Murder by Contract views its character as a near android who calculates and keeps his emotional displays to gross misogyny if he exhibits any emotions at all.

Murder by Contract has us watching a control freak deal with his plans failing and the cracks in his remote exterior are fascinating to behold. We’re both repulsed by him, fearful of what depths his lack of conscience makes him capable of, and grossly fascinated in watching what he’ll do next. There’s a preternatural calm to this character that is unnerving to an extent that noir’s various hoods and femme fatales never quite reach.