`POINTE BLANK' COMEDY DOESN'T QUITE HIT MARK.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

If you think facing your own high school reunion is tough, imagine the dilemma of the professional assassin.

``What am I going to say? I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How have you been?'' demands the worried Martin Blank (John Cusack) of his therapist (Alan Arkin).

Blank, a cool, stylish and successful solo act who discovered his talent for killing people while in the Army and then decided to go into business for himself, doesn't usually make time for soul-searching, but like a lot of people who are facing a milestone, he's begun having doubts about his career path.

Perhaps a reunion with his high school sweetheart (Minnie Driver), who he hasn't laid eyes on since he stood her up on prom night, will help him figure out exactly where he jumped the track.

That's the setup for this absurdist comedy, which mixes glib dialogue, a hip sensibility and an abundance of graphic violence to try to sustain a Tarantino-esque tone throughout. The problem is, the central joke isn't that fresh or funny, and the love story that crops up to take its place is even less persuasive.

Co-written and co-produced by Cusack, whose bland, dry and cerebral style is well-suited to these arch environs, the movie features an intoxicating '80s soundtrack (the Clash, the Jam, the Specials) and offers the fine-tuned comic sensibility of director George Armitrage, who turned ``Miami Blues'' into an idiosyncratic gem.

In the mode patented and reproduced for today's hip movie audiences ever since ``Reservoir Dogs,'' Armitrage pulls off numerous scenes that get their juice from contrasting the brutal with the banal, all the way up to a convenience-store shootout that features a hail of bullets whizzing past a cardboard cutout of the characters from ``Pulp Fiction.''

But though the shootouts and explosions are abundant and loud, in the end there's nothing more brutal and banal than a movie exercise as pointless and overheated as this one.

Redemption for Martin is out of bounds in a movie with so cynical a setup, and Driver, who was obviously cast because she's believable as a smart man's love interest, is too smart for this scenario, and there's no particular chemistry between the two of them.

When she says to the emotionally inert Martin, ``You don't get to have me, don't you get it?'' it looks as if the movie is going to insist on a shred of substance. But even that soon gets blasted away.

Cusack's sister Joan gives a gem of a performance as Martin's quirky, colorful receptionist, and Dan Aykroyd (as a rival hit man) can bluster his way through anything, but his contribution here seems particularly meaningless in a movie that is shooting blanks.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Grosse Pointe Blank'' (R; violence).

The stars: John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd.

Behind the scenes: Directed by George Armitrage. Written by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and John Cusack, based on a story by Jankiewicz. Produced by Susan Arnold, Donna Arkoff Roth and Roger Birnbaum. Released by Hollywood Pictures/Buena Vista.

Running time: One hour, 46 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Debi (Minnie Driver) meets hit man Martin (John Cusack) 10 years after he stood her up on prom night in ``Grosse Pointe Blank,'' when he returns to town for a high-school reunion and a contract killing.