“THE ASSASSIN” My rating: C+
105 minutes | No MPAA rating
Achingly beautiful and glacially paced, Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s “The Assassin” is not your run-of-the-mill martial arts flick.
Depending on your tolerance for art film posturing, you may find yourself wishing for a run-of-the-mill martial arts flick.
A deliberately intellectual effort that places the utmost importance on mood and ambience, “The Assassin” offers no gore and really not much action. Virtually no effort is made to forge an emotional bond between characters and viewers. Many scenes take the form of beautiful tableaus.
Yinniang (Qi Shu) is a young noblewoman kidnapped as a child and for several years trained as an assassin by a nun (Fang-yi Shue) who apparently sees herself as some sort of avenging angel. Now Yinniang is told she must kill her cousin Tian Ji’an (Chen Chang) to whom she was once betrothed.
While there is plenty of corruption that needs punishing (the time is the 8th century), Tian seems to be a responsible regional leader who cares about his wife, children and the general welfare of his people. Why the nun wants him dead is a mystery.
And in fact Yinniang — who can infiltrate any high-security area and lurk there unseen for indefinite periods — cannot bring herself to complete her assignment.
And that, folks, is about all I can tell you of “The Assassin’s” plot because I didn’t understand a damn thing that was going on.
There’s court intrigue of some sort, a jealous wife, a big dance sequence…but Hou and his screenwriters don’t seem to care at all about delivering a digestible narrative.
Nor do the players go out of their way to provide three-dimensional characters. Most speak in monotones, as if hypnotized.
“The Assassin” all boils down to sight, sound, atmosphere. If you can slow down enough to soak it up, I’m sure there are rewards.
I didn’t have the patience.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 