Assassination Tango (2003)

Powerful

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's a great title, conjuring up the idea of an assassin and his target in an intricate dance of death with each trying to outwit the other. Not so oddly, none of this occurs in the movie, and the intended assassination has nothing at all to do with the tango. It could be that as a writer and director, Robert Duvall is a much better actor. In fact, I consider him my favorite modern day actor on the strength of such films as "Open Range" and "The Judge", not to mention the 'Godfather' films he appeared in. But here he just seems out of his league in a picture that meanders around in search of a compelling story line. In particular, the circumstances surrounding the Argentinian collaborators, Orlando (Julio Mechoso) and Miguel (Ruben Blades) was handled very weakly. Their apprehension by authorities was explained after the fact by a bug in John J's (Duvall) room, but it just seemed a very lazy rationale with a noticeable lack of intrigue. Regarding the 'tango' part of the story, I thought the dancers, Luciana Pedraza as Manuela, and Geraldine Rojas as Pirucha, were exceptional in their roles, but would have better served the story if their characters weren't so passive. Maybe this could all be fixed with a re-write in which Robert Duvall plays the part of The Tango Assassin.

I very much prefer this film to Mr. Duvall's film "The Apostle" because this film is straightforward and unpretentious in a way the other film is not. The celebration of the tango remains the core of the film but the assassination subplot works well enough to entertain viewers and give the work coherence.Apparently, this is a small film but a master made it. The cinematography is lovely and never draws attention to itself as such. Watching the famous dancers featured here delights the viewer. The locations are authentic but dreamlike sometimes. The music is, of course, perfect. For what it is, this is a masterwork and well worth viewing and celebrating.

Robert Duvall's greatness lies in part, on his ability to become the character he's portraying, his identity subsumed in the film. In this movie, unfortunately, he emerges not as a hit man, but as an odd permutation of Harvey Keitel. I found myself wondering exactly "who" I was watching. Discovering after the fact that Duvall wrote the screenplay, all became clear. Actors tend to be empty vessels, filled by a writer's creation...Duvall mistook his acting gifts for writing talent, and produced an interesting glimpse of Buenos Aires' tango world, populated with the road show cast of "Reservoir Dogs". A few viewings of "The Official Story" might have provided better source material for Duvall, although the dialog consistently fails to ring true.

Robert Duvall has turned in such interesting performances in films like "The Godfather," "M*A*S*H", and "True Grit" that "Assassination Tango" comes across as a disappointment. The plot, the direction, and the performances are weaker than we might have hoped.As an actor, Duvall lapses into too many of his familiar arid chuckles. He whooshes when he's out of breath, which is okay, but then he talks to himself in order to let us, the viewers, know what his character is thinking.The other performers, with one exception, seem as if they'd been recruited from among a crowd of extras with more attention being paid to appearance than to thespian skills.As a director, Duvall aims at a kind of street-level realism that winds up as what can only be called simulated vernacular. Actors repeat their lines. Not just something like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute," but, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute." Some of the banter sounds embarrassingly spontaneous, as in some of Casavetes' work. It isn't that Duvall doesn't expose himself to risks -- he doffs his shirt and murders several strangers without blinking -- but it's just that the risks don't pay off.Maybe it would be better if the dragged-out plot had the sinuosity and precision of the dance interludes. There's no particular reason for Duvall's developing obsession with the tango. It's just flatly there, as is his friendship and tentative amor with one of the dancers, Luciana Pedraza. And yet an emotional involvement with the dance is understandable enough. What elegance! If anyone thinks of the tango at all, the notion is likely to evoke an image out of "Some Like It Hot." Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemon (in drag) snapping around one way, then the other, switching a rose back and forth between their teeth. But the real tango is different. (Cf., Saura's "Tango".) The dancers clasp each other and seem glued together from the neck up while their torsos and legs execute these unimaginably complicated maneuvers beneath them and carry them around on the dance floor. One false move and they'd both be flat on their backs. (Come on, babuh, let's do da twist?)There is one outstanding performance in the film and that is Pedraza's. We first see her as Duvall does, when witnessing his first tango. She is dancing on stage with a partner, her shimmering black hair pulled back in a severe bun (?), a captivating, almost hallucinatory hologram of femininity.Afterward, when she takes her seat at the table with some friends, Duvall signals her from across the room. A friend brings this to her attention and she turns her face to squint at him through the smoke. If one is expecting a staggering young beauty, one will be disappointed. This is a thirtyish woman with a small dimpled chin and slightly flaring ears. But her stare is filled with curiosity, understanding, and warmth. Que mujer! Her performance has the faux spontaneous quality of most of the other actors but at times she manages to succeed in convincing us that this is the sort of voice you might hear across from you in a café -- ordinary, except for a certain insidious Spanish accent that causes her voice to undulate in unexpected directions, the way her feet slither and glide across the dance floor.You don't really get to learn much about the tango, and I'm not certain just how professional the dancers are because I know nothing of the dance form myself. The assassination is unpleasant, although we keep hoping that Duvall gets away with it. (He does.) The movie ends happily with Duvall back in New York with his girl friend and her child, and it leaves us wondering what the point of it all was.