Gangster Cinema, British Style: The Hit (1984), Starring Terence Stamp, John Hurt, and Tim Roth

To grass, in British underworld parlance, means to inform on others to the police. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it derives from the word “grasshopper,” Cockney rhyming slang for copper.  The term has been around in Britain awhile, since the 1930's. In the 1970's, British journalists invented a new word, “supergrass,” to label an…