The one thing that, imo, lets it down

I love this film, I used to watch it all the time as a kid. But the one thing that lets it right down for me is the fact that it's too Hollywood safe.

Being a typical Hollywood film, Stallone is a 'good' hitman. It would have been so much more effective to go down the realistic, gritty route of showing Stallone as a ruthless killer, but instead he never actually kills any of his targets because they wanted to make him a good guy.

I know in some cases his targets were taken down by Banderas instead, and he would have killed them if given the chance, but it all adds up to them wanting to have a safe film, a film in which the protagonist is 'good', despite being a hitman.

Hollywood really needs to grow some balls, every hitman film i've seen coming out of the USA has had the hitman be essentially good and questioning his actions and wanting to change his ways. It's become a cliche and i'd like to see a more daring approach to the subject matter in which the lines between good and evil are blurred and the protagonist is just as immoral and coldhearted as the antagonist.