{"id":3537,"date":"2011-09-06T10:15:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T14:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3537"},"modified":"2011-09-06T10:15:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T14:15:30","slug":"br-assassins-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3537","title":{"rendered":"BR: Assassins (1995)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>A<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Standard<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: All \/\u00a0Released: August 15, 2001<\/p>\n

Genre: Action \/ Crime<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A top assassin finds himself the mark of an eager rival.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Theatrical Trailer<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Although co-produced by Joel Silver, Assassins<\/strong> is very much a small, 3-character film where allegiances sway from one side to another at key points, further stressing a vicious rivalry between two top assassins \u2013 a top-rated killer for hire named Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone), and a snotty, greasy, twitchy upstart named Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas).<\/p>\n

Miguel\u2019s determination to become No. 1 is like a crack addiction \u2013 he needs to kill more people faster, better \u2013 but he\u2019s repeatedly surprised that idol Rath continuously outmaneuvers and outshoots him, using an old-style firearm which inspires Miguel to call Rath \u2018an antique\u2019 to his face.<\/p>\n

Yet Miguel moves like a bloodhound, sniffing his way down corridors or city streets to find \u2018the mark\u2019 (target) before Rath, so he can collect the increasingly large bounty. When Rath gets fed up with the game, he takes a chance and lets his target, software whiz Electra (Julianne Moore), live, turning himself into the new mark.<\/p>\n

Woven into the script is Rath\u2019s seething guilt in having to kill a colleague and friend to become No. 1 himself 15 years earlier, and the general fatigue of hunting and killing for what\u2019s presumably a 20 year career as a hired gun.<\/p>\n

Stallone is perfectly cast as a stoic but lamenting assassin on his way out, staying cool under the craziest of circumstances, whereas Banderas (fresh from Desperado<\/strong>) goes for the behavioral opposite, flinching and muttering like an impatient teenager, constantly challenging Rath in action and words until the two must have their inevitable confrontation (which director Richard Donner stages in a large crumbling hotel).<\/p>\n

Moore gives the stock character of Elektra some intelligence, guts, and wily wits: she’s an industrial thief, and gets all giddy about selling a disc of coded information to a Dutch bidder (played by Jungle Warriors<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 [M<\/a>] Kai Wulff) for $40,000 \u2013 a paltry sum compared to the $2 million bounty on her head. Dragging her cat Pearl around town is a rich indulgence by the writers, but it gives Electra moments of verbal self-reflection, seeing how her character is basically a quiet, private mouse who likes to watch her neighbours\u2019 lives through spy cameras she\u2019s wired throughout her apartment building instead of knowing them on a personal level.<\/p>\n

Although the Wachowskis would write and direct the hugely profitable Matrix<\/strong> franchise for Silver, Assassins<\/strong> was their first produced script. Assassins <\/strong>stems from a simple concept, but it’s filled with the kind of character nuances typical of their genre-bending work, such as the lesbian crime noir Bound<\/strong> (1996). In the end, the pair weren\u2019t happy with the rewriting done by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential<\/strong>), but in spite of their publicized effort to have their names removed from the film, their names remained in the credits, since Helgeland largely rewrote the dialogue instead of conducting a major overhaul.<\/p>\n

Structurally, the film is sound, but it does have long stretches of quiet character moments, and Donner seemed content to let them play out, using them as buffer points between classically-rendered montages of scoping, stalking, running, chasing, and assorted mayhem. It\u2019s one of Donner\u2019s best films, and he\u2019s arguably one of the few who could make rear projection scenes work, exploiting Vilmos Zsigmond’s (McCabe & Mrs. Miller<\/a><\/strong>, Close Encounters of the Third Kind<\/strong>, The Black Dahlia<\/strong>) fluid camerawork.<\/p>\n

Donner reportedly junked much of Michael Kamen\u2019s score, keeping just two tracks, but hiring Mark Mancina and Media Ventures minions to score the film in record time, and their moody synth score works, giving the film a tense undercurrent, save for the Day of the Dead sequence, where it\u2019s clear the scene had been temp tracked with Eric Serra\u2019s music from La Femme Nikita<\/strong> (1990), Luc Besson\u2019s own film about a female assassin headed for a fast burnout. Mancina emulates a specific cue, but gives it a slight spin to ensure it still fits within the new score\u2019s framework.<\/p>\n

Although Assassins<\/strong> runs long, it\u2019s a notable little experiment by Donner and Silver, taking a traditional story of rival killers, and injecting the kind of nuances both generally removed from their own films \u2013 notably the Lethal Weapon<\/strong> franchise. The film didn\u2019t do well when originally released, but it\u2019s a minor classic, and features three charismatic and talent stars having fun with the script\u2019s rich little gestures.<\/p>\n

A related French film, Mathieu Kassovitz\u2019 Assassin(s)<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1997), may have missed the chance at a wide North American release because of the U.S. film\u2019s box office performance, but the two are widely different in tone, and Donner\u2019s film is grounded to a far more plausible and coherent script.<\/p>\n

This title is part of a 4-film Stallone Blu-ray wave, including\u00a0Assassins<\/strong> (1995),\u00a0Cobra<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1986),\u00a0Demolition Man<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1993), and The Specialist<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>] (1994).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album <\/a>— Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0A<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ A . Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Standard Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: All \/\u00a0Released: August 15, 2001 Genre: Action \/ Crime Synopsis: A top assassin finds himself the mark of an eager rival. Special Features: Theatrical Trailer . . Review: Although co-produced by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[710,711,659],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-V3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3545,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3537\/revisions\/3545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}