Interview with a Hitman

Viktor grows up amid poverty and harassment in a Bucharest slum, where debt-payers and a mafia threat loom over his family. He survives by showing ruthlessness on the streets and his early exposure to violence hardens him. He witnesses his father abusing his mother, and soon afterward his father is assassinated for failing to repay the mafia.

A mafia lieutenant named Sergei recognizes Viktor's raw potential and takes him under his wing. The mentorship begins as Viktor proves his mettle in brutal street confrontations. The cycle of intimidation and crime becomes Viktor's path toward becoming a killer.

Sergei trains Viktor to blend in, listen, infiltrate, and eliminate with precision. He also teaches a brutal philosophy: to destroy a strong man, strike at the people he loves. This philosophy will guide Viktor's most calculated decisions for years.

Viktor's first assignment is to collect a debt, but the debtor mocks him and pays with his life. Viktor ends the man's life and is about to kill the man's wife and children when Sergei intervenes. This moment cements Viktor's path into the underworld.

Viktor is moved to a larger city to be formally trained as a hitman under Sergei's guidance. The scope of his assignments grows, and so does his notoriety in the criminal underworld. This relocation marks the transition from street crime to professional assassination.

Viktor and Sergei take on a drug deal involving Franco, the son of their boss Traficant. Franco's reckless move forces them to kill the drug vendor and his bodyguards. They discover the vendor is Vadim's son, which tightens the stakes and complicates their cover.

To cover their tracks after the botched job, Viktor and Sergei scramble the evidence, but tensions escalate. Sergei tries to move against Viktor, gets disarmed, and is captured. He reveals that Traficant ordered Viktor's death, forcing Viktor to escape by staging his own death with a body double and burning his apartment.

Viktor resurfaces in London and takes on increasingly dangerous assignments for a local mafia boss. He retrieves a wanted informant and proves he can kill when necessary. A notable act is poisoning a British police officer with liquid nicotine in coffee to cause a fatal heart attack.

The boss's lieutenant betrays them, and Viktor eliminates the informant and the lieutenant to prevent exposure. He is then asked to kill a female reporter who is writing about him, testing how far his life of crime might go. The line between ally and enemy becomes increasingly blurred.

In a bustling coffee shop, Viktor intervenes when a group of thugs brutalizes a woman named Bethesda. He saves her, and they quickly fall in love as she becomes a stabilizing force in his volatile world. Six months later, Bethesda is pregnant, deepening his conflict about quitting.

A former ally, Cesar, tracks Viktor down with the intention of killing him, reawakening old enmities. They clash, and Viktor proves capable of defeating Cesar, underscoring that his past cannot be left behind. The encounter reminds Viktor of the price of returning to the old life.

Viktor travels back to Bucharest and discovers that two old bullies have become mafia men themselves. He confronts Traficant in a restaurant and shoots him, decisively ending Traficant's reign. He then orders Alexei to bury video evidence that Viktor is alive to avoid a larger reckoning.

An interview with a reporter becomes a trap as Bethesda appears again and Viktor hands the interviewer a ring that once belonged to his brother. Bethesda recounts a story of two girls taken from their father; one sister dies, but the other survives. The interview ends when Viktor shoots the interviewer before the truth can be fully revealed.

In the final, uneasy moment, Bethesda shoots Viktor with the gun dropped by the interviewer. She reveals Viktor killed Bethesda's parents when he began his career and used her to engineer his downfall. She confirms she is carrying a boy and vows to show him the truth about his father when he is old enough.