In the darkly comic Reasons to Kill, a hitman meets with three potential clients as they each pitch a target to him. The only criteria they must satisfy is not monetary, but emotional: ‘You need to make me feel something.’

The biggest flaw of Reasons to Kill is that it’s not a full feature film. Between an unfaithful dentist, a duplicitous fro-yo entrepreneur and the rebellious daughter of a racist, Reasons to Kill could easily have stretched to an hour or so with very few tweaks to the actual plot, to the point where exploring each plot in enough depth to hook the viewer becomes difficult. In that sense, the film could have benefitted from removing a potential target sooner; in particular, the daughter, whose only real folly was to love, marry and become pregnant by a black man, comes across as a red herring put there more to highlight the hitman’s morality, which is better presented by the odd hero himself.

The hitman himself cuts a compelling figure, at once enigmatic and purposeful. In particular, his rejection of monetary motivation creates an interesting moral dimension to his work. ‘You need to make me feel something,’ he tells a potential client, ‘You need to sell it to me.’ Whether intentionally or not, the hitman presents an interesting reflection of the viewer’s own thoughts process when watching violence; specifically, it considers the ludicrous question of whether or not they have a ‘good enough’ reason to accept violence (so far as it can be argued that there is ever a good enough reason for violence). Is a striking story enough to justify murder? That is up to the viewer to decide, but it is nonetheless explored beautifully in Reasons to Kill.

If you would like to watch Reasons to Kill, you can find it here: https://vimeo.com/138947241