Trama

Professional assassin Martin Blank is sent on a mission to a small Detroit suburb, Grosse Pointe--where, by coincidence, his 10-year high-school reunion party is about to take place.

Martin Blank is a freelance hitman who starts to develop a conscience, which causes him to muff a couple of routine assignments. On the advice of his secretary and his psychiatrist, he attends his 10-year high-school reunion in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a Detroit suburb where he's also contracted to kill someone. Hot on his tail are a couple of over-enthusiastic federal agents, another assassin who wants to kill him, and Grocer, an assassin who wants him to join an "Assassins' Union."—Afterburner <aburner@erols.com>

Martin Blank is a contract hit man. After being in the business for five years, he is getting disillusioned with it and imposes himself on a therapist, Dr. Oatman, who is reluctant to help him through his issues because of his business. Part of his disillusionment is because of the changing nature of the business, as witnessed by one of his fellow hit men, Grocer, wanting to form a cartel of sorts despite the inherent non-trust with each of the other hit men. Because one of his contracts didn't go down strictly according to plan, Martin is forced to take a job in Detroit for the same client, pro bono. Marcella, who handles the administrative aspects of Martin's business, encourages him to attend his 10-year high-school reunion in Grosse Pointe in suburban Detroit while he's there anyway. Martin has not been anywhere near Grosse Pointe since graduation day and prom night, when he stood up his prom date and serious girlfriend, Debi Newberry. While in Detroit/Grosse Pointe, Martin wants to forget about his hitman life and focus most specifically with reconnecting with Debi, who now works as a local radio host. Making it up to Debi may not be as easy as he wants, despite both still being attracted to each other. But getting away from his hit-man life won't be easy either: Grocer has tipped off the NSA to Martin's job, the two agents, Steven Lardner and Kenneth McCullers, who plan to take him in when they catch him in the process of the hit, but who contemplate taking him out themselves. In addition, Martin learns the hard way that someone else has taken a contract out on him. Martin's life becomes even more complicated when he learns who his contracted hit is.—Huggo

Martin Blankman is a hitman with some emotional problems. He goes to a shrink who doesn't want to deal with him, and he has had recurring dreams about his long-lost love for 10 years, since he stood her up on prom night. When Blank gets an invitation to his 10-year school reunion, he is originally dead-set against the idea, but when he is hired for a job in his hometown he is forced to return home and face some truths.—Herm Holland

The film opens with a man on the phone with his assistant, discussing the transfer of funds for specialized ammunition, while he prepares a high-powered rifle with a suppressor and a scope. The man is Martin Q Blank (John Cusack), who works freelance as a professional, highly-paid assassin. As he tracks a bike messenger riding quickly down a Los Angeles street, his assistant, Marcella (Joan Cusack) reads him an invitation to his 10 year high school reunion, which is taking place shortly in Grosse Pointe, a suburb of Detroit and Martin's home town. Martin shoots the bike messenger just before the man can shoot and kill another man coming out of the hotel across the street. Chaos erupts as the target's bodyguards open fire. While they check on their boss, a doorman suddenly appears and kills the bodyguards and the target and disappears into the hotel. Martin recognizes the other assassin as Grocer (Dan Aykroyd), one of his chief rivals.

Martin finds himself depressed and irritable, dissatisfied with his work and the increasing competition from rival assassins, including Grocer, whom meets with Martin and tries to coax him into a small assassins guild he's forming with several other individuals in their field. Martin is resistant, saying he prefers to work alone and Grocer leaves in a huff.

Following a botched contract where Martin shoots the man instead of making it look like a natural death, Martin stops by his office where Marcella tells him his employers for the botched job want him to make amends. She also tells him the job just happens to be in Grosse Pointe and that he can attend his reunion and do the job over a weekend. Initially reluctant to attend, Martin is also talked into it by both his (understandably nervous) therapist (Alan Arkin), who tries to drop Martin as a client because Martin kept his preferred line of work a secret for several appointments. Martin is also nervous about seeing his old girlfriend, Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver), whom he abandoned on prom night 10 years before when he enlisted in the Army.

Upon arriving in Grosse Pointe Martin seeks out Debi, now a radio DJ and is playing an all-1980s music weekend in honor of the reunion. Martin's subsequent visit to his family only heightens his depression; his childhood home has been demolished and replaced with an UltiMart convenience store, his mother lives in a nursing home and suffers from severe dementia and his father is dead (Martin's tribute to his father is to pour an entire bottle of whiskey on his grave and leave the empty bottle behind). Martin visits Debi at the radio station where she works and their conversation doesn't go very well; while still on the air, she toys with his guilt over leaving her 10 years ago without a trace and entertains calls from listeners who support her anger with Martin. However, there seems to be a glimmer of hope for rekindling their romance.

Reconnecting with friends like Paul (Jeremy Piven) is likewise depressing, as many have integrated themselves with the local community through mundane establishment jobs. When asked about his livelihood, Martin readily reveals that he is a professional killer, a response taken as a joke by everyone he meets. Meanwhile Martin is being stalked by rival hitmen, including Grocer and Felix LaPubelle (Benny Urquidez), a Basque terrorist hired to kill him, as well as two awkward National Security Agency agents (Hank Azaria and K. Todd Freeman), briefed by Grocer, waiting for him to do his "job" so they can kill him as an enemy of the state. Despite these dangers, Martin remains distracted by his desire to make amends and procrastinates, not even bothering to glance at the background dossier on the prospective target.

When Martin returns to the UltiMart, he is immediately attacked by LaPubelle and the two exchange gunfire, destroying the store. Martin and the clerk working there are nearly killed by a bomb planted by LaPubelle. Martin later meets with Grocer for breakfast at a small café. Martin reaffirms his refusal to join Grocer's assassins' union, much to Grocer's disappointment. Martin also visits Debi at her apartment attached to her father's house and is able to convince her to be his date for the reunion.

At the reunion, Martin mingles with his former classmates, one of whom hands him her adorable toddler. Martin stares into the child's face and experiences an existential transformation, recognizing that his recent dissatisfaction with his work and his amends with Debi signify an opportunity to change his life. He and Debi fade from the party and go to the school's health office and have sex on one of the gurneys.

Debi returns to the party while Martin checks out his old school locker. Suddenly, LaPubelle appears and the two engage in a furious hand-to-hand battle. Martin finally kills him in self-defense, using a pen he'd gotten from a fellow classmate. Debi stumbles upon the scene and, horrified to find that Martin was not joking after all, flees the reunion. Paul follows only moments later to find Martin, who corrals him into helping to dispose of LaPubelle's body in the school furnace.

Debi later confronts Martin in his hotel room, where he reveals that psychological testing in the Army revealed "a certain moral flexibility" that made him suitable for a CIA-sponsored "mechanical operations program." After leaving the CIA, he went into business for himself. His rationalizations for his work only horrify Debi even more; she rejects his attempts at reconciliation, and storms out. Martin, concluding that it is futile to attempt to change his life, fires his psychiatrist over the phone and finally opens the dossier containing the details of the contract that brought him to Grosse Pointe: he is startled to find that the target is Bart Newberry (Mitchell Ryan), Debi's father, who is scheduled to testify against Martin's client.

Grocer decides to stop waiting for Martin to kill Bart and attempts the job himself, to impress Martin's client and boost his own business. Out of loyalty to Debi, and his "newfound respect for life", Martin abandons the contract and rescues Bart from certain death, speeding him to the Newberry house and holing up inside, narrowly ahead of Grocer and his team of mercenaries. During Grocer's raid on the house, Martin kills several of them, hiding Debi and her father in the bathroom. Martin finally reveals that he stood Debi up on prom night to enlist in the Army to channel his strong homicidal urges away from his family and friends. Martin gradually kills the remaining mercenaries, the NSA agents (with Grocer's gleeful help) and Grocer himself, moments before proposing marriage to Debi, to which her father enthusiastically offers his blessing. Debi, shell-shocked from the day's events, doesn't respond. Hours later she and Martin speed out of Grosse Pointe together.