Assassins
I don’t think the character dynamics work quite as well in Richard Donner’s “Assassins” as well as I used to, but I would still say that it’s an underrated effort from the veteran action director. You can see the threads of a thriller that could have been as exciting as “Face/Off,” but ultimately, the film moves towards action cliches that make beats in this film feel tired and generic. It’s well worth considering, though, when one looks at Donner’s career as a whole.
This is one of four movies in the last decade and a half of Donner’s career where one of the main characters has been wrestling with mortality, the sins of his youth, or figuring out ways to atone for past mistakes. The last two “Lethal Weapon” films had Murtaugh and Riggs, respectively, dealing with those questions as they cracked wise on cases, and Donner’s last film, 2006’s “16 Blocks,” has an alcoholic detective trying to get a key witness against police corruption in front of a judge before his buddies on the force are able to kill him. In “Assassins,” Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone) is haunted by a kill he made 15 years prior, and now, a younger assassin has him in his crosshairs when their paths cross on a couple of jobs in a row. In the first scene, Robert is taking a mark out to the swamp to die. The mark asks for sympathy; Robert gives him a gun to take his own life. Robert is still capable of the hunt, but the kill doesn’t come as easily, and when Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas) takes a hit from under him, that killer instinct turns towards Miguel, even when a lucrative contract comes along.
The screenplay was originally by Lana and Lily Wachowski, who sold it to producer Joel Silver the same time he bought another script of theirs, “The Matrix.” Reportedly, rewrites Donner had on it by Brian Helgeland- not far away from his 1-2 punch of Donner’s “Conspiracy Theory” and the Oscar-winning “L.A. Confidential”- changed the story enough to where the sisters tried to get their names removed from it. They were unsuccessful, and “Assassins” does stand apart from the rest of their career. People wrestling with their identities and cyber hacking do play a role here, but they are sidelined- mostly- for a conventional action thriller approach that is more within Donner’s wheelhouse as a director. That approach keeps the film from being as successful as the first two “Lethal Weapons,” “16 Blocks” and “Conspiracy Theory,” but Donner is so well attuned to it, and knows what he wants to get out of Stallone and Banderas, that it may be a flawed approach to the material, it’s still an entertaining thriller to watch.
The third act of the film has probably one of the best sequences that Donner has ever directed. Rath has made a deal for a disc his mark- a computer hacker played by Julianne Moore- was selling to Dutch buyers earlier in the film. He’s having the money wired to the same bank his kill from 15 years ago occurred at; he is fully expecting Miguel to be there, in the same window along the way, ready to shoot him. He has an idea to make him sweat, and watching this moment of cat-and-mouse is exciting in a way the rest of the film struggles to do, at times. “Assassins” is much better when it is focused on the characters and their relationships to one another. Stallone, Banderas and Moore all shine in those moments, and when that happens, “Assassins” is one of the most memorable films the great director has ever made. It’s just not there enough to elevate the movie to those heights completely.
