Love and a Bullet

Love and a Bullet has a sly satirical tone that lifts it above the common herd of would-be Quentin Tarantino movies. Rap star Treach plays Bishop, a hit man who declares, "The world is full of people that, quite frankly, we all could do without." But his rationalizations start to fall apart when he's assigned to kill a woman who, in his eyes, deserves to live. Plus, he suspects that his boss--who runs an elite team of assassins--may have killed Bishop's own lover, a beautiful government agent. Naturally it's all building up to a typical spectacle of over-the-top violence with some gratuitous skin along the way (including full-frontal nudity from the very buff leading man), but what makes Love and a Bullet work is that the filmmakers use its absurd reality to make sneaky comments about race relations and job satisfaction. --Bret Fetzer