Marketers: Umm Sly and Antonio are in it?
Imagine for a moment that you are the preeminent example of your craft. You have trained, focused and honed your skills until you are the most sought after professional in your field. If anyone wants someone to do the job you do, they call you or settle for second-best.
Now imagine that you take a highly paid gig, plan it to the nth degree and show up to complete the task, only to have a gonzo fly-by-night hack step in at the last moment to clumsily complete the job seconds before you are able.
What would you do in that situation? Well if you are Robert Rath (Sly Stallone), highly paid elite assassin, you might be a little perturbed…
Perturbed enough to carry on a very ‘un-assassinly’ running shootout in the very cemetery where your competition so rudely overstepped his bounds mere seconds before.
Perturbed enough that when the other guy Miguel Cain (Antonio Banderas), is taken in by the authorities only to escape almost immediately, that you might take a chance and steal a taxi in the hope that the other guy will actually choose not to lay low – in the period after not one, but two shootouts that have left civilians and cops alike dead – but summon a cab to take him to the airport.
Perturbed enough that when this very thing occurs, the two of you hold a running shootout in the taxi, followed by near capture for you both once again.
For the purposes of the film, let’s imagine that Robert Rath is organized, cerebral, patient and professional, and Miguel Cain professes to have studied his every move and nuance, only he is actually the opposite of him in every way.
For some reason the very existence of each other winds these men up to the point of frustration, though for the life of me I have trouble understanding why.
That aside, things come to a head upon the nomination of a new target, the ‘spunky’ young IT thief with no known identity aside from a computer logo of a picture of cat’s eyes.
Now stay with me here. Both Rath and Cain are contracted to kill this woman, who later labels herself ‘Electra’ (Julianne Moore) and is in reality a fairly small time hustler trying to cadge $40,000 in one last scam before exiting the game altogether – I know this is the mid-90’s but I doubt very much anyone is retiring on $40,000. Hope she has temp skills… In any case as before both assassins descend on the target simultaneously, with Cain again getting a head start and killing almost everyone around her, though this time Rath is a little faster to react, and he and Electra flee to safety. Wait, wasn’t he killing her a second ago?
In any case Rath and Electra spend the remainder of the film with Cain hunting them both, gunning down random bystanders and neighbours without drawing any attention from the police or authorities.
The ‘action’ consists mostly of two guys shooting at each other and missing quite a lot. There is none of the normal stealth and careful moves normally associated with the ‘assassin’ descriptor. It all clumsily moves to a finale where the newly teamed duo of good guys must visit a bank – the scene of one of Rath’s former hits – knowing full well Cain is zeroing in to try to kill them both. It’s all quite ridiculous, tedious, protracted and to be frank, unearned.
Assassins in a 120 minute snoozer.
Antonio Banderas tries vainly to supply the action and the quips, but ends up being merely a cartoon version of his own Desperado with the flashy moves replaced by inane dialogue and constant profanity. Sly Stallone isn’t actually called upon to do much aside from looking like he has been here before, and let me say that if you think about it his backstory is sketchy at best, in fact I think over the duration of the 2 hours he kills a grand total of one person. ONE. Again not exceptionally ‘assassinly’ stuff.
Julianne Moore tries to be the light and breezy Electra but she is clearly above the Heather Graham style material undeserving of a fate such as Assassins.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. There are actually moments in the film where we are threatened by entertainment, but they are fleeting and unfortunately never arrive. Let’s just say that I would prefer to rewatch ‘Cobra’ again over this mess, at least Cobra knows it is big and dumb. By refusing to acknowledge this fact, Assassins just might be the bigger and dumber of the pair.
