"Your wife wants you dead." -- Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski to his next door neighbor Nick "Oz" Ozaransky

A 2000 release starring Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Rosanna Arquette and Michael Duncan

There is an obsession with the "mob" in Hollywood. A subset of that is that there is also an obsession with hitmen. For a long time movies about these people were dramas, culiminating with my personal favorite in the genre "The Mechanic" which stars Charles Bronson as the quintessential hitman. Now we're getting comedies involving such men and The Whole Nine Yards is definitely a funny movie. The laughs are courtesy of Matthew Perry who is playing another in his endless series of nice guys. This version is a dentist, married to a harridan played very well by Rosanna Arquette. She is such a horrible woman that her husband's assistant Jill calls her "the bitch".

When someone moves in next door to Oz, he goes right on over to introduce himself to his new neighbor and finds that a famous contract killer is now living next door. He seems normal and nice enough for someone who is reputed to have killed 17 people. But his arrival bodes nothing good for Oz. To give too much of the plot's twists and turns would ruin parts of the experience and I won't do that. But things get complicated and quickly and one of the things that is complicating matters is that Oz's wife not only tried to get The Tulip to kill her hubby, she's hired at least one other before him.

The acting here is first-rate. Willis is easily believable as someone who will kill anyone necessary, even his own wife. Perry plays every comedic moment for the maximum amount of laughs available. Amanda Peet and Michael Duncan are great in their supporting roles, and Kevin Pollak does a nice turn as a Chicago area mobster who has a score to settle with "The Tulip"

The acting isn't the only thing first-rate about this movie. It's well-written, gets laughs where intended and unlike some other movies, doesn't get laughs where they don't belong. Any comedy about killers and killing has to have some amount of deglamourization of violence, but even here writer Mitchell Kapner and director Jonathan Lynn have clearly gone out of their way to do this as little as possible. The focus is on making the audience laugh, rather than gross out over the killing.

I can't help but marvel at how Bruce Willis continues to make good choices. Taking on this role was definitely a good choice on his part.