Assassins Tale (2013)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent adaptation.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

ASSASSINS TALE is a cheap-as-anything crime story involving a trio of lead characters who are mixed up in the criminal underworld. It's one of those inconsequential low budget stories that opens with a graphic murder and goes from there. The video cover missells it as an action thriller but it's more of a talky character drama with a few violent moments. The whole thing feels tired and long-winded, let down by sub-par scripting which makes the characters themselves a real bore.

"Assassins Tale" has some good qualities. The characters are eccentric and complex. Some of the dialogue is quite clever, although there is often too much of it. The editing is impressive, although it sometimes becomes intrusive and distracting. It has a few nice touches, such as the bit with the casino chips. On the down side, it tries too hard to emulate Tarantino in stead of carving out it's own identity. Even the poster art features a putatively female assassin with a katana who has apparently wreaked considerable havoc and destruction, although the image has nothing to do with the film. We have assassins who wax poetic on life, sex and philosophy and occasionally decide to defy orders and logic by allowing their targets to live. One of the assassins is a heroin addict. The movie breaks for musical interludes, although not of the caliber of the "Cat People" segment in "Inglourious Basterds." It's passable low-budget entertainment, although it has some major flaws. The cinematography is marred by extended jiggly-cam shots that will leave the audience reaching for the Dramamine. Even the sweeping pans look as if they were shot by somebody in the midst of an epileptic seizure. The pistols often look like plastic toys. Make- up effects for wounds are basically nonexistent. The film switches between color and monochrome for no apparent reason other than to draw attention to the editing. The actors talk and emote fairly well, but acting is about action. The two words have a common root. We call people in movies actors, not emoters or talkers. There are no car chases. The only time anybody operates a vehicle is in one shot where they drive into the scene. There's a little walking. One character swims. Another carries a surfboard on to the beach. But there is no fighting , climbing, horseback riding, etc. It's pretty much limited to people sitting or standing around talking and occasionally drawing weapons and shooting one another, interrupted by long transitions and unnecessary establishing shots. The film has a lot of heart, but not much energy. The actors do as reasonably as can be expected with the material they're given, but their discourses on life and the ethics of their profession would have greater impact if they had to work at it and not simply stand there and pull a trigger, instantly dispatching their victims. Compare this to opening scenes in the most recent version of "Casino Royale," where James Bond has to work and risk his life to kill somebody who doesn't want to die.

If you're looking for a high action assassin flick, this is not it. Although there are a few twists in the storyline, there is a lot more dialog than action. Michael Beach, Anna Silk and Guy Garner are three assassins contemplating life and love, loyalty and deceit. The scene depicted in the poster has nothing to do with the film. The budget is low, but the dialog is well written and the acting is well done. All three wonder about their inevitable future and what's to come while dealing with their current lives. Rob Roy Fitzgerald and Kaiwi Lyman also do a fantastic job. I wouldn't say this is one of my all time favs, but on a rainy Saturday afternoon I would watch this again!

The discussions between Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction started up this genre, with assassins that speak a lot about their feelings or thoughts. Those dialogues taken separately are better than most movies in this niche in their entirety and, unfortunately, Assassin's Tale falls into the same category.The problem is that killers talking about themselves is just cutting corners on some real film making, where one would construct a story to develop the characters. Instead we are regaled with verbal diarrhea that means nothing and reveals nothing and just takes up from the viewer's time.In this particular group of films, this one is not actually that bad. The beginning, at least, starts up very smartly, with lines that just feel original and surprising. I kept imagining what the characters would say and they would do something really different, but also real feeling. It didn't last though, as a big part of the movie was hijacked by the usual tough guy underworld and psychopathic wise guys and that sort of crap that completely balanced out the good starting bits.And then there was the end, fragmented, pointless, unrealistic and lame. The point of a low budget movie is to show a good idea or the effort one puts into the script or acting, not to rehash an already obsolete recipe.While I am sure the film makers meant well, I am sorry, but I cannot recommend this movie for any reason.