From Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien comes the critically acclaimed film The Assassin, a movie that won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The Assassin is a wuxia film that follows Nie Yiininag (Qi Shu), a woman who was abducted as a child from a prestigious family and raised by a nun to be an assassin. After 13 years she returns to her homeland where she has been ordered to kill her once husband-to-be. Upon her return, she faces many difficult decisions including killing the man she loves, confronting her parents, and potentially breaking the code of the assassins.
If you asked me my opinion of The Assassin right after my screening of the film I would have told you that I’m not really sure what I watched. Actually, scratch that, my first response would be “why are so many people praising this film?” With about 15 minutes’ worth of dialogue in its 104 minute duration, I can honestly say this was probably the most boring film I’ve seen all year. I can’t even count on two hands how many times I fought my body from falling asleep. Not every film needs a lot of dialogue but with our lead focusing on so many different people, more dialogue was needed just to clarify the direction of the story and who exactly everyone was. Also, the dramatic elements weren’t exciting or engaging enough to supplement the lack of dialogue and keep me focused on the film. Kim Ki-duk’s Moebius was more interesting and there wasn’t one word of dialogue in that flick.
Additionally, to call this a wuxia film is embarrassing as there’s maybe three to four minutes’ worth of actual fighting in the entire film. I understand that this film was supposed to be a drama with some action elements in it, but Hou focuses so much on the quiet drama that the action feels pointless. In fact, the action was the main reason I was able to stay awake simply because the clanging of metal was able to provide a jolt of life into the room. When I say it was a brutal watch, it was a disappointingly brutal watch.
There are really only two things I liked about The Assassin. One of its merits were the visuals. The cinematography is fantastic and the film is so beautiful it could be used as a live portrait to help people doze off into a glorious slumber (which explains why I struggled to stay awake). The colors, the costumes, the precision of the camerawork, it was all excellent. This, coupled with a poetic score, really helped create a compelling film for the eyes and ears but, as mentioned above, it doesn’t do much for the brain and engage us in a way that we want to stay glued to the screen.
The Assassin isn’t a film I can recommend unless you are truly a high-brow, Cannes film festival type that revels in movies about nothing. Those that can appreciate the art of film in its simplest form without being bored to death. In my opinion, the film is difficult to follow, ends abruptly and has a title that will deceive martial arts fans into watching a film that’s extremely lacking in the one element it should have a decent focus on, martial arts. One of my favorite phrases is that looks can be deceiving and that perfectly describes this flick: The Assassin is beautiful but it has no meaty substance that will compel you to stay awake, or even stay in the theater, until the end.
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