Wolff rating: MOSTLY HARMLESS
Plot summary: Hitman, tired of his profession, tries to do one last job and quit. Golly, there's a novel premise.
Biased, pithy comments: First off, this movie seems like a twisted remake of another stupid Sly action film, ``The Specialist.'' Both contained Sly as a thoughtful hitman (which is an acting stretch for him), a nearly-insane villain (this time Banderas), and a slow uninteresting plot. Unfortunately, Donner and his army of producers (check out the sheer number of assistant producers at the end) couldn't clear that low bar. Instead, this movie insults the intelligence of the audience. Besides the fact that most of the tense action sequences seem to be brought about by the character's incomprehensible motivations and stupid quirks (and the final gunfight seems like it could be avoided by a simple wire transfer, but hey, that's just me), the writers are forced to tell the audience things. My favorite moments are those when a character with a high-powered gun is sitting at some perch waiting for someone else to come out. At some point he says inevitably says something about ``I want to kill this guy.'' Gee, is that why you have the gun? Is that why this movie is called ``Assassins?'' It's really too bad, too, since (except for Sly, who can act but only in a limited range) there is a pretty decent cast and a fair amount of money lavished on it. If you want anything like a cool action film about hitmen and/or Banderas, see ``Desperado''or any action film from Woo except ``Hard Target.'' If you're in the mood for something that is as formulaic as this but done much better, you should see ``Replacement Killers.'' Just don't waste your time on Earth with this.
Other Notes: So, if you were a trained hitman, wouldn't you wear gloves when rifling the apartments of the people you've killed? These guys leave more DNA and fingerprints than the entire Red Army. If you were in possession of information that someone wanted to kill you over, wouldn't you make several backup copies?
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, Julianne Moore, Pearl the Cat.
Directed by: Richard Donner