Review of The Assignment (2016) by Paul H — 07 Mar 2017

Good trashy fun. I enjoyed this film. It's also one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while. At times I was scratching my head wondering "what the hell is this?. But I for sure wasn't bored.

And I'm a bit surprised by the intense negativity surrounding it over the whole transgender thing. The story really isn't about anything transgender at all. The forced sex change story is just a gimmick, to put a spin on the typical hitman scenario.

But yeah, I guess I do understand that some will feel this is in bad taste. It's definitely not for everybody. There's plenty to criticize here - Michelle's dude makeup is often unconvincing.

There are plot holes galore, and some things really don't make any sense at all. But there's plenty of good stuff too - It looks great and moves fast. The music score is excellent and has a cool retro feel.

The action is well done. If you're expecting big budget stuff like explosions, car chases, or epic fight scenes, you'll be disappointed, The action is mostly just Michelle shooting bad guys. But these scenes are quick and efficient and done with style.

There are really good performances from Tony Shalhoub and Sigourney Weaver, too. I'm not big a fan of Michelle Rodriguez in general. I thought she was OK here. Michelle affects a retro, tough guy style of speech, like in an old gangster film, and I think this is alienating some people.

The performances overall are pretty campy, but Michelle sometimes feels like she's in a different film. The film also has some comic book aspects to it. Every now and then a scene will freeze frame and change to a comic book drawing before moving on to the next scene.

This looks cool, but it happens randomly. They should have done this either a lot more or not at all. This is actually one of my bigger criticisms - the film often doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

Some parts are campy and outrageous, others parts are very straight forward. The whole movie probably needs to be even weirder and more shocking than it already is. Even with its flaws, I recommend it for the more adventurous film fan.