Assassins

Assassins casts Sylvester Stallone as Robert Rath, a professional hitman whose latest (and possibly last) job involves the murder of an elite hacker (Julianne Moore’s Electra) – with Rath’s decision to spare the woman’s life prompting the appearance of a deadly, seemingly unstoppable up-and-coming killer named Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas). Filmmaker Richard Donner, working from a script by Brian Helgeland and Larry and Andy Wachowski, certainly does a stellar job of initially luring the viewer into the proceedings, as Assassins‘ first half moves at an impressively brisk pace and contains a whole surfeit of exciting action sequences. It’s only as the movie segues into its comparatively low-key second hour that one’s patience begins to wear thin, with the progressively uninvolving vibe compounded by Stallone’s curiously, disastrously subdued performance – as it subsequently does become more and more difficult to wholeheartedly care about or sympathize with his character’s ongoing efforts at staying alive (and protecting Electra). Far more problematic, however, is Banderas’ painfully and unreasonably over-the-top work as Rath’s gung-ho rival, with the actor’s scenery-chewing antics, which inevitably progress from mildly annoying to nails-on-a-chalkboard intolerable, preventing Bain from becoming the fearsome presence that Donner has obviously intended. The movie’s less-than-engrossing atmosphere is compounded by a severe case of overlength that’s compounded by Donner’s increasingly relaxed sensibilities, and it’s finally impossible to label Assassins as anything more than a decent 80-minute thriller that somehow manages to chug along for over two hours.

** out of ****