Review of The Assassin (2015) by Michael S — 14 Nov 2015

A terrible, pretentious, poorly done mess, this is a collection of wide and very wide static shots in 1.37:1 with nary a close-up of any kind, and with barely any dialog, music or interesting story or characters to speak of (interrupted a few times by laughably bad fight scenes, that are introduced in quick cuts, presumably to wake up everyone in the audience who have fallen asleep). The movie is dull and ugly - yes, ugly - what these people who say it has "thrilling visuals" saw is beyond me, but it couldn't have been this dreary mess.

Before anyone things I'm against "slow" movies, I can emphatically state that I'm not. I love when movies take their time to tell a story, and do it largely through visuals. That's not the problem with this movie. The problem here is that it's amateurish and poorly executed. Wide shot after after wide shot of people next to each other staring. Nature scenes with nothing of interest in them. It's like the people who shot and edited this have never done a movie before. Like a terrible home movie - that's the level of professionalism on display here. I didn't walk out, only because I don't do that. But this was one movie I wish I hadn't wasted 100 minutes of my life on. Watching grass grow would like have been more interesting.