I Hired a Contract Killer

I Hired a Contract Killer (1990) is a deadpan Finnish comedy-drama from Aki Kaurismäki — watch it online on iFILM. Jean-Pierre Léaud plays Henri Fournier, a mild Frenchman who spent fifteen years shuffling papers in a grey London office and was let go in a round of redundancies. His attempts at suicide go nowhere; he simply lacks the nerve.

So Henri takes the logical next step: he finds an agency, pays cash, and hires someone to do it for him. The contract is sealed, the killer is hired — and then, strolling through a pub, he meets flower seller Margaret (Margi Clarke) and discovers he actually wants to be alive.

Shot in London with a skeleton crew, the film works precisely because everything looks cheap and forlorn. The bare flats, the rain-soaked streets and Léaud's hollow-eyed silence add up to something genuinely strange — a comedy about mortality that never tries to be funny, and lands harder for it. Stream I Hired a Contract Killer (1990) on iFILM.