Assassins (1995)

Richard Donner's Assassins arrives from 1995 like a bottle pulled from a cellar nobody visits anymore. Sylvester Stallone plays Robert Rath, a contract killer who wants out, and the film asks nothing of him beyond quiet competence in a nice coat. Antonio Banderas supplies the noise as Miguel Bain, a younger gunman who adores his rival and intends to bury him. The screenplay began with the Wachowskis and was rewritten page one by Brian Helgeland at Donner's request, a revision the original authors protested to the Writers Guild and lost. The result is a clean, sullen thriller about professional jealousy and very little else.

Julianne Moore's Electra is the single element that asks for a moment of consideration. She is a hacker with a fondness for hidden cameras and remote mechanisms, and she saves Rath in the final seconds by putting on her sunglasses so he can aim a shot backward off the reflection. It is a competent woman doing competent work, and the film lets her, without commentary or applause. The ledger shows a small entry there. Small.

The rest of the cellar is bare. Race goes unremarked. The climate goes unremarked. Capital goes unremarked, and the mercenary economy of the story is presented as a trade, not an indictment. No sermon is preached, no lesson drawn, no audience scolded for its insufficient virtue. The picture opened at number two behind Seven, collected a raspberry nomination for its star, and was largely forgotten. A GIF of Banderas looking away from a laptop in joy has outlived it. We classify what we are given, and here we are given almost nothing to classify at all. A dry vintage, this one. Correctly cellared, largely undrinkable, and of no ideological consequence whatsoever.

We note the absence of any nutritional content and move on to the next bottle. There is always a next bottle. That is the burden of the post.

What little remains is a curiosity about a script the Wachowskis wished to disown and a director who defended the work to the end. Neither party was wrong. The film is competent, forgettable, and free of instruction. In this house we score such things honestly, and honesty here means an empty plate.

That is the whole of the tasting note. Serve chilled, if at all, and expect no conversation afterward.

A final thought, offered without enthusiasm. The thriller as a form once permitted itself to be merely thrilling, and this is a specimen of that older dispensation. It does not argue. It does not teach. It simply runs, shoots, and stops. There is something almost restful in it.