I decided to watch this B-(C? D?)movie
because of its interesting, insane premise: a hitman is forcibly given a sex
change, and as response, he – now a “she” – goes on a vengeful warpath. Though it somewhat reminded me of the twist
of the Spanish psychological thriller film The
Skin I Live In, I thought that this was a creatively original setup for a
revenge thriller movie.
The Assignment (also known as Tomboy: A Revenger’s Tale and (Re) Assignment) centers on the ridiculously unique experience of
contract killer Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez), as he is subjected to a sex
reassignment surgery against his will by the sociopathic Dr. Rachel Kay
(Sigourney Weaver) – partially, out of
revenge for her brother whom Kitchen killed, but also for the purpose of
conducting an experiment assessing gender identity. Of course, Frank is ballistic after being
atrociously violated, and proceeds to seek and kill everyone that has a hand on
it.
By any objective barometer, this
is a terrible movie. There’s an obvious effort
to be surprising and clever, I’ll give it that.
But the story is extremely stupid.
Dr. Kay is supposed to be this Shakespeare-quoting, mad genius-type
visionary that has developed the smoothest, fastest, most inexpensive, and most
efficient sex-change process, but the script failed to believably sell
this. If the movie at least tried to be
a bit science fiction-y, it could have worked better. And if there was an attempt (not sure, if
there was or if it was only an incidental implication) to have a “gender isn’t
defined by genitals” message in it, it was pretentious and fundamentally flawed
in its argument.
The cheap production value is
obvious all throughout. But this fact is
at its most distractingly apparent in the practical effects exerted on giving Michelle
Rodriguez a male look (prior her character’s sex-change). Its sorry attempt of prosthetics and makeup failed
miserably to hide Rodriguez’s feminine physique. Heck, they even gave her a fake beard and
penis! The “special effects” – if we can
call them as such – are so laughably bad.
One minor aesthetic triumph that
this movie has though is some attempt to have a gritty, neo-noir, “graphic
novel”-type atmosphere (like a poor man’s Sin
City). But this only manifests a few
times in the movie. Most of the time,
the flow is a mess. This is not an exaggeration,
but based on several scene transitions, this movie looks like it was edited at
some parts using the Microsoft Windows Movie Maker software.
However, I would be lying if I say
that it has no entertainment value. It
has some of that. There’s some hovering
sense of intrigue in this movie. But a
gratifying connection with it is never made.
The action scenes are also unfortunately sub-par.
The premise definitely has that fresh-and-fascinating
promise. And it also has solid stars in
Rodriguez and Weaver. The only things actually
lacking were a well-written script, a more inspired direction, and a higher budget. If these had been the case, an actual good
movie would probably have been the result.
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