Review of The Assassin (2015) by Loretta D — 27 Dec 2015

You need to understand the plot before you can enjoy the movie. As a child, Princess Yinniang gets sent to live with Princess Jiaxin. Jiaxin is a princess/a nun/an assassin/Yinniang's aunt. When Yinniang is an adult, Jiaxin brings Yinniang back home to her mother so that Yinniang can assassinate Lord Tian Ji'an and other corrupt government officials.

Tian Ji'an is Yinniang's cousin/ex-fiancée/the governor of the Weibo kingdom. One of Ji'an's concubines, Huji, is pregnant, but I assume she's going to abort it because she's pretending to not be pregnant.

Whatever the case, Tian's wife, Lady Tian, knows. Now suspicious of Ji'an, Lady Tian seems to wonder if Ji'an spent the night with Yinniang (he spent it with Huji). Ji'an doesn't catch her drift and compliments her on how "well informed" she is about the comings and goings of everyone in Court.

She seems simultaneously thankful for the praise and offended because it's her deductive reasoning skills that cause her to be all-knowing, not what other people tell her. She doesn't tell Ji'an about Huji.

Yinniang finds out about Huji and tells Ji'an. Yinniang can't seem to bring herself to assassinate any longer because she doesn't want to leave children fatherless. She comes across a masked female assassin.

They automatically duel when they first meet, so I assume it's a turf war. Yinniang breaks the other assassin's mask, which apparently designates Yinniang as the winner. The other assassin lets her gold mask fall to the ground and return to the ores in the soil from whence it came.

I assume the point is that the formerly masked assassin won't return to the area so Tian Ji'an is safe. The elaborate costumes and set design, the fascinating witchcraft, and the fact that this is an ancient fairy tale make the movie worth watching.