The Assignment (2016)

Excellent but underrated film

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

How could these renowned actors get roped into this drivel? It's a terrible movie, but, unlike other terrible movies, it has name stars. The budget is listed as $5,000,000. That's not very much to cover their salaries. The writing is third grade level at best. Are Sigourney, Tony Shalhoub, and Michelle Rodriguez this desperate for money? I cringed through the stilted dialogue and suffered to the end so I could see if there was anything redeeming in this mess. There wasn't.

Outrageous and wildly un-PC story has hit-man Frank Kitchen, a bearded Michelle Rodriguez, kidnapped and forcibly given gender reassignment surgery by doctor Sigourney Weaker as revenge for Kitchen's killing of her mobster brother. Kitchen wakes up from the surgery to find himself now a woman, but Kitchen is now determined to find out who did this to him so he/she can exact his/her revenge. From there, the film is a fairly standard revenge picture along the lines of "Point Blank" or "Oldboy" where Kitchen works his way up the food chain of underworld figures until he reaches his eventual final target. Anthony LaPaglia, who I don't think I've seen in years and was quite excited to see in something again, plays one of those targets who double crossed Kitchen. Tony Shalhoub also has a juicy role as an interrogator taking a statement from Weaver in a Death and the Maiden-like verbal sparing match, where Weaver narrates the events of the film and serves as film's framing device. Produced, written, directed by Walter Hill, he brings an assured hand to the action and fills the script with his usual tough clipped dialogue. I was about to write that this is Hill's best work in years, but it's really just Hill's first film as director in many years. Hopefully he's been living comfortably off of his producer credits on all of the Alien sequels and prequels, but it's exciting to see Hill return to his scrappy low-budget action film roots with this outlandish action flick. "The Assignment" also boasts a score by the great Giorgio Moroder (with orchestrations by and some additional music by Raney Shockne), which is Moroder's first feature film score since the 1990s. Now if you were wondering if the film has a subtext around gender politics, violence again women, and such, it does not. Hill's film is less like The Wachowski's rich genre and gender mixing "Bound" and is more similar to Steven Soderbergh's "Haywire," which was more just a straight-up action film focused on Gina Carano kicking ass (but with a bit more pulpy Roger Corman/Samuel Z. Arkoff exploitation thrown in for good measure). Overall, "The Assignment" is a must see for fans of Hill and 1970s style of gritty pulpy action films.

I watched this film because one of my family members who is naive to the way Amazon operates put it on because it was suggested by Prime. Productions like this is the very reason I personally refuse to order a Prime membership. It's so obvious it's an Illuminati social engineering film meant to program behavior and philosophies into the audience. Needless to say usually I don't watch stuff like this but I decided to watch this time to see what passes for mainstream entertainment these days. As I said, this was a sick film... Cursing, nudity & promiscuity, killing, back stabbing, and general evil behavior; it made me think of a bunch of demons scrambling to get to the top like a bucket of crabs. They only thing that was sorta good was that none of the characters where good but none completely evil either. Me

I didn't know anything about this movie, the title attracted me, but neither does Michelle Rodrigues, nor Sigourney Weaver. Something female about the killer disturbed me in the beginning, and that should not have been.The Director draws some final scenes into a comic picture, which is a clear wink, it's up to the viewer to accept it, or not. I like a movie from another universe. And the Killer's name is Frank.I'm a huge fan of Rodriguez, Robert, directing Frank Miller's Sin City, and this movie really gets into this slow monologue talks about revenge, everybody has his own cause and his own way for revenge. The psychological philosophical screen writing is quite up to the reference. I finally admit that I was not outraged against the director to refer to the atmosphere of Sin City, in fact the more the movie went on, the more I enjoyed it, and the final scene is worthy.Which made me curious to read at the end, the director Walter Hill. What, another copy ? No, THE Walter Hill, who made great, though brainless action movies in the 80ies. Except Warriors!Don't get me wrong. This does not have the depth of Sin City, and anyway, Jessica Alba is getting old, and Brittany Murphy has left us, and Carla Gugino, Alexis Bledel, Devon Aoki, Rosario Dawson can't be hired all together again.Fact is, the choice of female actors could have been better. Rosario Dawson would certainly have done a better job than Michelle Rodrigues,though Sigourney did quite well, although the movie falls flat on the erotic aspect.I forget about 9 movies out of ten, but this one, nevertheless, I will remember very well, later on, and I'm sure I will watch it again.