TonyWatchesMovies Movie Review: The Assassin: 8 out of 10

I always enjoy foreign films. Americans have this idea that if a movie doesn't have explosions, death and a badass main character that it is a boring movie. They are wrong, obviously, to those of us who dare to peek our heads from the safety of the inpenetrable fortress that is mainstream media. The Assassin didn't have as much killing as I expected, and I have to admit I was suffering from a "judging-by-the-cover" movie experience where I sat with my arms crossed, pouting into my shirt that I didn't get all the wanton death and mayhem I was promised from the title. However, of course, whilst watching further, you realize that this movie isn't all about the act of the murder, it is the story around it, how the world is changed by it, and that is where The Assassin shines.

TonyWatchesMovies Score: 8 out of 10

I'm not exactly sure how this one flew under my radar. My favorite time period to watch movies about is feudal China, and this one won some awards and was actually highly recommended after I did some digging. I don't want to tell you about the plot because the whole story is centered around it (weird, huh?), so assume I liked the movie as a whole. Now, however, I'm going to get into some stuff I didn't like.

There is a lot of high-class people and their politics in this movie, however, it's not like a bunch of puffy English nobles prattling on about peoples' love affairs and how strong they like their tea while bumbling around their fancy mansions like in Downton Abbey (BURN, DAD!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA I'M MAKING FUN OF YOUR FAVORITE SHOW HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!). There is, however, some weirdness. There are scenes where a guy will literally go stand on a balcony in a palace, look out over the horizon with an angry look, then go back inside, and the camera stays on the horizon for a minute or so. I have to ask myself, what is the importance of those scenes ("those" meaning "there are multiple", and all of them are as pointless)? Does it add something to the politics that they were just discussing? They'll do that sometimes, there will be this big discussion about important stuff, then there will be a scene where a person is doing something mundane or it's just the treeline, then it gets back to the plot. WHY?!?!? It's not like the plot was moving at lightspeed so they had to slow down the movie, it was already slow enough. It felt like a hard stop to a car that was only moving 10 mph.

Some of the people also seemed fake as well. Yes, there seems to be a lot of fake beards and hairdresses, but I mean more than that. I feel like some of the actors don't belong in the movie. Seriously, some of them seem like they don't know what era they're in, so they put on a deer-in-headlights look and monotonely drone out their lines like the terrified kid in the school play. It seems like all the effort was put into the main characters so the other guys just kind of sit there and do nothing as the story moves along.

There was one music track that bothered me throughout. A low drum would play only on the left ear, while a different percussion device (I'm not sure what I would classify that sound, it was very strange) played on the right ear. It was super disorienting for me, I wasn't sure if they were sound effects or music or both, so throughout I became distracted by it. Conventionally, music and dialogue go into whatever left/right channels you have and a center channel, if you're Dolby, then effects fill out wherever you need them. Having music tracks separated into two parts like that was super weird to me.

Overall, though, great movie. It's a little long, sure, but since it's in Chinese and since I'll assume that you're American, there will be subtitles, which makes the whole story fit together better because it's like you're reading a story as well as seeing it.

Cheers,

-TonyWatchesMovies