Assassins

Jesus what a boring fucking movie.  There was no excuse for this.  You have Sly Stallone who was coming off of a nice run with Cliffhanger, Demolition Man and The Specialist.  He also did Judge Dredd the same year as Assassins which may not be the greatest but at least it has style (I love the production design in that film).  Stallone hits a wall starting with this film and with the exception of Cop Land (which was alright) doesn’t pull out of the tailspin until Rocky Balboa elven years later.

Antonio Banderas had a monster year in 1995 doing five goddamn movies (Miami Rhapsody, Desperado, Four Rooms, Assassins, Never Talk to Strangers).  Funny enough the first movie he did in 1996 was called Two Much (pardon the pun).  But he was in prime form, if being stretched a bit thin that year.

And Richard Donner (Lethal Weapons, Maverick) was starting the end of his career (he would only make four more pictures after this) and seems to be getting rusty.

I can totally see how everyone involved thought this would be an action packed kick ass movie about rival assassins after the same target.  The Wachowski’s (The Matrixes) wrote this, along with Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, ThePostman, Payback), and it was their first major Hollywood job.  I’m not a really big fan of the Wachowskis but the script doesn’t seem terrible.  Ok, Stallone being an assassin with a heart of gold is pretty fucking dumb but the basic premise is solid.  I dunno what happened.

I can’t stress enough just how uninteresting the final product is.  Stallone does not look like he’s into it at all and at the other end Banderas feels like he’s overcompensating with his incredibly gregarious and sinister disposition.  Nothing really gels.

Even the action scenes are boring.  Sequences like the one where Stallone is driving a cab and Banderas is in the back and they’re both trying to kill each other while speeding through traffic sound fucking awesome but come off as tedious instead.  I mean the finale to the thing is Banderas waiting for Stallone to walk out the front door of a bank so he can snipe him.  It should be filled to the gills with tension but it’s not.  You see Stallone knows Banderas’ plan so he simply stays inside the bank.  That’s fucking bogus man.

This is one you can definitely skip.  There are plenty of better movies out there about assassins like Leon: The Professional, The Killer or even John Wick.  Check out one of those instead.