Review: The Assignment

There is a certain excitement that any genre fan will feel at the mention of Walter Hill. He is a legend for making such films as The Warriors. It is this reputation that makes the fact that his new film The Assignment is terrible so depressing.

Hill assembles a talented cast in Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Tony Shalhoub to tell the story of a master hitman who gets changed into a woman as part of an elaborate revenge plot. Frank Kitchen (Rodriguez) wakes up to find himself a woman after killing Dr. Rachel Kay's brother. Kay (Weaver) is a brilliant and insane cosmetic surgeon. The film is largely about Frank killing folks in his way to get to Dr. Kay.

This pulpy plot would have better place in the 1980's where its offensive gender politics would not stand out so much. In 2017, the film is so routinely offensive to women and minorities that you wonder who financed this thing. It made me question if I needed to go back and revisit Hill's classics with a new outlook. This is the kind of film that adds subtitles to as Asian woman who is speaking English because it thinks the audience won't understand her. 

Moving past all this, the film is low-rent and not any fun. Here might be the only cinematic moment of a man upset that he suddenly has boobs. The film treats the ridiculous premise with absolute seriousness, never winking at the preposterous nature of the plot. Hill has a knack for action scenes and tense exchanges but none of that skill is present here.

The one possible highlight of the film is Sigourney Weaver. She is clearly all in to play a revenge-crazed doctor. She spews lines with so much energy that you will really wish the film around her was better.

The film has received a fair amount of anger from the LGBTQ community for the film using reassignment surgery to inflict suffering. At best, the film could be shrugged off as careless. At worst, it highlights that roles that represent this community often as weirdos and outcasts. To be fair to the film Frank is the same person he was as a man, that part of the representation is fair. 

When the controversy around a film is more interesting than the film itself, there is a problem. That is the issue with The Assignment. Aside from a really fun performance from Sigourney Weaver, this film fails to be fun, exciting or interesting. 

2/5