Jerry and Tom

Jerry and Tom is a 1998 American black comedy film directed by Saul Rubinek in his directorial debut. The screenplay was adapted by Rick Cleveland from his own 1994 one-act play. The film stars Joe Mantegna and Sam Rockwell as contract killers who work at a used car dealership. The film premiered at Sundance in January 1998, and, after Miramax declined to release it theatrically, aired on Showtime.

Hit men Tom and Jerry wait in a Chicago bar for the go-ahead to kill Stanley. Anxious to get the hit done, Jerry suggests they perform the hit immediately; Tom refuses, and Stanley entertains them with jokes. As the phone rings, the film shifts to a flashback set ten years earlier, in 1984. Jerry, a youth employed at Billy's used car dealership, joins Tom as he walks with Karl. Karl describes how a local gangster bit off the nose of Karl's nephew. Disturbed by the audaciousness and brutality of the attack, Tom promises to look into the issue. However, Karl becomes spooked when they enter Tom's car, and Karl begins bargaining with Tom, to Jerry's confusion. Tom agrees that the two are friends with a long history but strangles Karl after an apology. Jerry throws up but insists that he is otherwise fine.

Tom's next hit involves a trip out of state. Jerry tags along, and when he becomes surly, Tom allows him to accompany him to the site of the hit itself, a cinema. There, they meet an unnamed man who becomes annoyed with their loud conversation in which Jerry describes a domestic dispute with his girlfriend, Deb. The man in the cinema tells them the story about how he and his fiancée, Vicki, the star of the low budget action film he is watching, angered the mob. After hit men assassinate Vicki via a weapons mishap on the set, he goes into hiding and loses his will to live. Moved by the story, Jerry decides to marry his girlfriend, and the two hit men rise to leave. Jerry is surprised when Tom slits the throat of the man, and Tom admonishes him to not get so emotionally involved in the stories of their victims.

On Jerry's first kill, the two track their victim to a Chinese restaurant. Nervous, Jerry becomes paranoid and makes a spectacle of himself in front of the victim. To calm him, Tom describes Ronald Reagan's final acting performance, a cold-blooded hit man in The Killers. Enthused by the thought of following in Reagan's footsteps, Jerry is able to relax and make his first kill. Later, as the two wait for their next hit, Tom tells Jerry about their co-worker, Vic, who is rumored to have had an affair with Marilyn Monroe and assassinated John F. Kennedy. When the target arrives, Jerry asks to make the hit himself, and Tom impatiently watches as Jerry awkwardly attempts to make a clean kill. After Jerry simply pulls out the pistol and shoots the man head-on, they leave.