BEFORE: OK, a few days off and I'm back at it - on the days I'm not watching movies I'm still chipping away at my "to-do" list, but jeez, it's hot. Too hot to do any physical work around the house, and we had one air conditioner quit already, and we can't get it replaced until Monday. So it's going to be a LONG weekend, my wife's been sleeping in the living room, which is often MY thing after a late movie. I'm trying to watch as many movies on the computer as I can so I don't keep her from getting her sleep. I can sleep any time, I'm flexible.
Michael Keaton carries over from "American Assassin".
THE PLOT: Rescued as a child by the legendary assassin Moody, Anna is the world's most skilled contract killer. However, when Moody is brutally killed, she vows revenge for the man who taught her everything she knows.
AFTER: Yep, another assassin-based movie - this seems to be quite the year for them. I'm sure there will be a few more coming up this summer after this one, too. Let's see if this one sticks to the same formula as the others. Let's see, we've got:
1. Lead attractive female assassin in tight clothing (Barely Lethal, Kate, Domino, The 355)
2. Samuel L. Jackson in the mentor role (Barely Lethal)
3. Michael Keaton as the seen-it-all, world-weary older guy (American Assassin)
4. A notable torture scene (The Man from Toronto, American Assassin, Barely Lethal)
5. An assassin character who was an orphan or lost a loved one (umm, all of them)
Well, I said that I didn't mind a formulaic plot as long as the movie put forth a good story, or exemplified the BEST use of the formula. Well, I lied. This one just feels kind of tacked together, maybe because now I know how it was put together, I can see where the seams are. OK, we'll take an orphaned girl in Vietnam and connect her with the expert assassin, and the rest will just fall into place from there, she'll grow up and become the best in her business, because she's got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. There's always a choice, however, she didn't HAVE to become an assassin, did she? It's a fait accompli, really, because that's what the screenwriter wanted to write about.
I'm shocked that these films haven't all been written by the same person or people, but come on, doesn't it sort of FEEL that way? I guess maybe the action screenwriters have story conferences where they get together and they workshop new ideas to tack on to the old ones so that somehow the screenplay will feel original and fresh, when it's clearly not. "Hey, did you guys ever write one where the hot female assassin is also flirting with the lead bad guy at the same time? No? OK, I'm gonna try that one out and see if it works."
Yeah, so the lead female assassin, Anna, gets totally propositioned by Rembrandt, the older, world-weary semi-villain (?) before he lets on that he knows she's an assassin whose cover is that she works in a rare bookstore. And she doesn't say no, she's clearly into it, but then, she doesn't know yet that he's going to end up working for the guy she's trying to take down. What a conundrum - even when the mark gets taken down, these two don't know whether to kill each other or sleep together. Well, who knows, maybe both, the night is still young after all - but they better make sure they do these two things in the right order, because if they kill each other, it might be hard to sleep together. Right? OK, sleep together, then if it doesn't work out, try to kill each other, that's where all married couples end up eventually anyway, right?
The story's a little wonky across the board - Moody, the mentor, asks Anna, the assassin, to track down someone named Lucas Hayes. Not kill him, just find him. After she starts her search she gets that visit from Rembrandt at her bookstore, then she finds both Moody and her main researcher/finder guy killed. So clearly somebody didn't want this guy to be found. Anna can only tell that Lucas's father was a past target of Moody's, and she uses her connection to a biker gang in Vietnam to get close to that target's former business partner, just to ask a few questions. But then the business partner gets killed, and the real mastermind behind everything (?) is revealed - too late, though, Anna's been captured and they torture her to find out why she's looking for this guy.
Oh, there's more to the story, but I'd pretty much given up caring about the search for this guy by this point. It's more exciting to see Anna have to escape from prison, and then go up against Rembrandt in one of several exciting combat scenes. It's just that most combat scenes don't end this way, with the characters deciding to call it off to see if they'd be better lovers than enemies. There's something just a bit - icky - about that, like maybe keep your romance subplot out of my action movie, OK? Some screenwriter meant well because they wanted to keep the audience guessing, but this just isn't the way to do that, OK? Like I don't think you should date somebody you work with, but call me old-fashioned, I guess.
Quick, how old is Samuel L. Jackson? He's 74, and he's still making action movies. More power to him - black don't crack, baby. OK, maybe he was 72 or 73 when this was filmed, but still - he's also in "Secret Invasion" which just came out, and he's kicking Skrull butt and taking names and really, he doesn't look a day over 55. OK, with the beard, maybe 60. Keep working as long as you can, I guess.
Also starring Maggie Q (last seen in "Fantasy Island"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Reasonable Doubt"), David Rintoul (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Patrick Malahide (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Ray Fearon (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)), Ori Pfeffer (last seen in "Angel Has Fallen"), Robert Patrick (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Florin Piersic Jr., Tudor Chirila, Velizar Binev, George Pistereanu (last seen in "The Contractor"), Eva Nguyen Thorsen, Alexandru Bordea, Tanja Keller, Taj Atwal, Caroline Loncg, Gamba Cole, Phong Giang, Richenda Carey, Dimitar Nikolov, David Sterne (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Jack Derges, Stefan Ivanov (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Lili Rich, Ekaterina Baker (last seen in "The Card Counter"), Cosmin Dominte, Don Michael Paul.
RATING: 5 out of 10 cigars in a box
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