★★
“This hit lady’s more of a miss…”
Things the movies teach us, #285: if you are a criminal, do not agree to do “one last job” before retiring, because it never works out that way. I guess assassin for hire Mimieux doesn’t go to the cinema enough, or she’d have known this, rather than letting herself get talked into that OLJ, in this case, killing a union leader. To make it look like an accident, she has to get close to him, only to find herself falling in love with her target – a common hazard of the job, going by how often this happens in films. From here, it’s all downhill, as her identity is compromised, and she has to flee.
Coming in at a slim 74 minutes (presumably 90 with commercials!), this TV movie was made in 1974, and has a lot of aspects which are now horribly cliched, but were perhaps a little fresher in its own time. Mimieux also wrote the script, and part of the problem is the extremely low body-count: we only see her kill once, so the persona of a ruthless hit-woman is never established for its subsequent challenge. Some fabulous 70’s fashions though, despite Mimieux’s fondness for wooly hats, and the ending is surprisingly grim. While I must confess that I did spend much of the second half playing Brickout on Chris’s mobile phone, this is probably still somewhat more watchable than your average 27-year old TVM.
Dir: Tracy Keenan Wynn
Star:Yvette Mimieux, Joseph Campanella, Clu Gulager, Dack Rambo