Film Review – The Assignment

Director Walter Hill has shared his love of B-movies throughout his career, only tripping over himself when trying to bring his scrappy sensibilities to blockbuster entertainment. His fondness for westerns and cold-blooded violence is reheated for “The Assignment,” which embraces hitman formula while giving the picture a strange twist on the killing machine routine, playing broadly with changes in gender and time. I’m sure Hill had a blast putting the film together, and there’s a palpable sense of mischief at work to lubricate the body count. However, while “The Assignment” is nonsense, it’s not especially interesting nonsense, watching Hill flounder as he tries to make a potentially distasteful premise into a graphic novel-inspired romp that’s miscast and entirely free of suspense. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com