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Released
1998 · FILM

The Big Hit

A good-natured hitman must outwit his treacherous colleagues and a ruthless crime boss after a botched kidnapping lands him as the prime suspect, all while keeping his deadly profession hidden from his unsuspecting fiancée.

“Nothing's more dangerous than some nice guys... with a little time to kill.”

Directed by
Kirk Wong
Written by
Ben Ramsey
Runtime
91 min
ActionComedyCrime

Synopsis

Melvin Smiley, an affable hit man, frequently finds himself the victim of scams by his cutthroat colleagues in the assassination business. When he and his fellow assassins kidnap the daughter of an electronics mogul, it is inevitably Melvin who is blamed when the operation goes awry. This is due to the fact that the girl is the goddaughter of the gang's ruthless crime boss. As he evades bullets, Melvin must also keep his dangerous profession hidden from his unsuspecting fiancée, Pam.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 21

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Robin RussellShot by Danny NowakScored by Graeme RevellDesigned by Taavo Soodor

Box Office

1998 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$27.0M

Budget$13.0M
Worldwide gross$27.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $10.8M — 40% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $13.6M — 50% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 2,149 theaters

Also known as

  • The Big Hitde
  • Equipo mortales
  • Il grande colpoit

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