Assassins (1995)
DIRECTOR: Richard Donner
CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, Julianne Moore
REVIEW:
If not for the involvement of action star Sylvester Stallone, one senses Assassins would be straight-to-video fare, and that’s where the quality level lies. For helmer Richard Donner, this is a disappointing step down from the Lethal Weapon series, and doesn’t represent anything more than a mindless diversion for any but the most undemanding of action fans.
Our anti-hero is the wittily-named Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone), a veteran hitman regarded as the best of the best, who wants out. To this end, he accepts a $2 million contract on surveillance expert and techie Electra (Julianne Moore) to retire on. But there’s a fly in the ointment, young assassin Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas), who is stealing Rath’s jobs out from under him and has his sights set on taking out Rath himself to replace him as #1. Soon, with Electra in tow, Rath ends up in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with Bain and the unseen contractor who might be manipulating both of them.
Assassins is strictly mediocre, uninspired “action thriller” fare, indifferently directed and poorly-written. It’s the kind of movie where characters have names like “Rath”, “Bain”, and “Electra”. It’s the kind of movie where a car can crash into the side of a bus and the guy hanging out the car window somehow not only survives, but doesn’t even seem to be injured. Disappointingly for the helmer of the Lethal Weapon series, the action sequences are the occasional car chase or shootout that’s as generic and perfunctory as can be, and generates neither cleverness nor excitement. Not once, but twice (possibly more; Bain is hyperactively chatty enough that I may have lost track) we are treated to the Fallacy of the Talking Killer, in which a villain holds the protagonist at gunpoint but needs to laboriously monologue before pulling the trigger. More convincing elite movie assassins don’t have time for this melodramatic nonsense, and it’s especially egregious in one scene where the sniper with his finger on the trigger is essentially monologuing to himself (not sure if I’ve seen that variation on the trope before, but it’s not an improvement on it). There’s other convoluted stuff of the type that unintelligent thrillers come up with in try-hard attempts to make the characters look smart, like Electra using a radio-controlled toy truck to swap the disc for payment with her clients by sending the little guy back-and-forth through a hotel air shaft. There’s an eleventh hour “surprise reveal” that’s not very surprising, and the ending confrontation is anti-climactic with neither cleverness nor excitement (in fact, it feels almost shoehorned in as an afterthought). Worst of all, if the pacing was fitful enough before then, it comes to a screeching halt during the interminably lengthy third act involving a lot of sitting around (Rath inside a bank, Bain in a sniper’s perch waiting for him to come out) and some unlikely shenanigans wherein Electra stumbles around a rickety hotel and falls through decrepit floors trying to steal Bain’s rifle. At a slim 88 minutes or so, Assassins might have been generic but diverting. It was in no way necessary for such a humdrum action flick as this to chug along for over two hours, especially considering it doesn’t have anywhere particularly interesting to get to. Add in a somber, dour tone, and one feels like Assassins is taking itself too seriously.
Sylvester Stallone, he of the single facial expression and monosyllabic grunting, plays Rath as the cliched “elder veteran hitman with a code who wants out”; he doesn’t believe in collateral damage or take contracts on people whom he deems to not deserve what they have coming (Bain, by contrast, leaves bodies littered willy nilly everywhere he goes), and has one mode of grim stoicism. This might be fitting for a world-weary hitman who wants out of his dirty job, but it doesn’t make him especially dynamic or interesting. Then again, it’s not like we go to Stallone looking for bravura displays of emotional range. Antonio Banderas, by contrast, goes way over-the-top, snarling, cackling, and flailing his way through his role with a sweaty, hyper intensity that starts out mildly entertaining but ends up getting old. Julianne Moore is left third-wheeling it as the plot device/budding love interest (I guess?) who ostensibly gives Rath a reason to live, though neither her bland character nor the movie’s non-development of whatever budding romance (?) is supposed to be going on here makes us buy her as some soul-replenishing catalyst (that, and it’s hard for any actress to try to generate sparks playing off of an inexpressive block of wood like Stallone). Richard Donner’s cousin Steve Kahan, probably best-known as Captain Murphy in the Lethal Weapon franchise, pops up for a thankless cameo (it consists of getting assassinated while, to add insult to injury, attending a funeral). There’s barely anybody else in the movie, and definitely no one that makes any impression (then again, the leads barely do either, so that might be asking too much).
The screenwriting duo of Andy and Larry Wachowski have claimed that their script was virtually entirely rewritten by Brian Helgeland, and went so far as attempting to have their names removed from the credits. Whether the Wachowskis, Helgeland, or a combination are responsible for this hackneyed thriller, the end product isn’t something anyone involved should brag about on their filmographies. Assassins wants to be a taut cat-and-mouse game between two elite hitmen, but in this case, whoever wins, we lose.
* *