Someone pitched a movie to me the other day, and I though the story was pretty good in a straight-to-video kind of way- a man losing his sight hires a hitman to kill him before he goes completely blind, then changes his mind. He must then seek out the hitman while his vision degenerates. Anyway, I mentioned the story to a friend and she swore that she’d seen a movie with this exact plot. So, was this guy having me on/ripping someone else off?
I’m not sure about the going blind part but I’ve seen movies with similar plots where a guy hires a hit man to kill him and then changes his mind. The Warren Beatty movie, Bulworth comes to mind.
Also, The End, with Burt Reynolds and Dom Delouise.
Intolerable Cruelty, even though it doesn’t quite fit the plot.
There was a book with this premise, only the protag was a woman. I think it was by Winston Graham (that’s because I think I read the book because I had previous read Marnie and liked it a lot). I’m thinking this one was also a movie, but if so it wasn’t credited to Winston Graham according to IMdB so maybe I’ve got the wrong author in mind, but it was definitely a book which I read in the '60s.
But the guy may not be having you on or plagiarizing. There are a lot of ideas out there . . .
Sounds like Emmett’s Mark (AKA “Killing Emmett Young”). I don’t think the main character’s going blind (he’s diagnosed with a terminal illness at the beginning of the film), but otherwise the plot’s pretty similar to the one you describe.