The doomy, passion-drenched noir Bulletproof Heart (directed by Mark Malone, written by Gordon Melbourne) is the perfect movie for a Valentine's Day hangover. This small-scale but intense movie is set mostly during a single night; it begins with Mick, a top-professional hit man (Anthony LaPaglia), recuperating from his latest successful mission, a job cleaning up the mess left by some wanker, and sneering at the pretty hooker who his contact (Peter Boyle) has routinely sent over as part of their regular arrangement, as if she were a mint on his pillow. Whether he's burned out his soul through too much killing or is just so good at killing because he has no soul, Mick makes a big show of not caring about anything--too big a show to convince you that he's as deep or wounded as he seems to think. (Me thinks the scumbag doth protest too much.) In any case, he's about to reconnect to the world in a big way, at the cost of finding out how much feeling anything can hurt, because he's about to meet Fiona (Mimi Rogers). She's beautiful, sexy, and suffering. She can't walk around the block without causing some poor guy to fall in love with her. She's given up on the world to a degree that Mick can hardly imagine. She is, inevitably, Mick's next target.
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