m3review: ASSASSINS

ASSASSINS

	subscribe
	movies
	about
	tell

10/2/95

When I first heard about ASSASSINS, I did a little arithmetic:

Film title, "Assassins" + Sylvester Stallone in the lead role = pass

But then I added in:

Antonio Banderas + Julianne Moore + Director Richard Donner + Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond ...

= Oh, OK, could be decent...I'll see it.

Well, I've seen it and no-one else needs to.

Here's the story: Stallone is this assassin, Robert Rath (or something like that). He's the best of the best, but he's had enough, he wants out, but he keeps getting offered "one last job." Problem is he has a competitor -- Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas). Miguel is a younger assassin, almost as good as Robert, and dying to win away Robert's crown. They both get assigned to taking out a hacker/data thief (Julianne Moore) who has "the disk." I don't want to waste my time going any further describing the plot. You can fill in the blanks as you will. Action, suspense and thank god, though the bud of romance shoots forth, there is no sex scene between Stallone and Moore.

Some of the action is OK, most of it is rechauffe. The movie plods along, thinking that it's building suspense when in fact the only tension building was in my bladder. Stallone gives a performance that adequately meets the role, although he didn't at all convince me he had feelings for Julianne Moore's character. Banderas's performance is kinda over-the-top and some of his shots seemed to have been lifted straight out of DESPERADO. Julianne Moore is wonderful, but there wasn't a lot she could do in this film. Her character was OK and her performance made it better, but still. It kind of made me retch to see yet another adorable, lonely woman who spends all her time with her computer and her cat. I think Hollywood is blowing their numbers WAY out of proportion. And the computer displays in this movie are pathetic. Even though the machines are Mac PowerBooks, every time a character displays on screen, it makes a blip or a bloop and the chess game Robert computer talks in a robotic voice ala WARGAMES.

You know, getting back to arithmetic, ASSASSINS seemed to me in many ways to be THE SPECIALIST + THE NET + DESPERADO.

But it isn't as bad as THE SPECIALIST, i.e. it's not so bad you should see it to just to laugh at it. And frankly, the resourcefulness and gadgetry of ASSASSINS is not nearly as interesting as that of THE SPECIALIST.

It's not as sophisticated as THE NET - which isn't saying much, but at least in that movie you had more of an idea of who the characters were and you cared what was going to happen. I did care for Julianne Moore, but mainly because she was so cute.

And the only thing ASSASSINS bears in common with DESPERADO is Antonio Banderas jumping around and shooting things in his distinctly Latin style. (I nearly moaned when both he and Stallone were on the floor with guns pointed at each others' head.)

I guess overall, I'd blame the writers -- three were credited. The romantic dialogue was the worst. Scratch that -- the dialogue overall was the worst. The ending definitely had the feeling of a committee decision and it went on forever. But the direction was OK and Vilmos always produces nice-looking footage.

Having said all this, ASSASSINS isn't root canal surgery. But there are a lot of better films out there and life is short.

previous | subscribe | movies | next