Assassins
You get pretty much exactly what you’d expect to get from this one so I don’t feel so bad about waiting so long to see it (it had kinda reached that point where every time I saw it was on TV or in a shop or whatever, I was like, “why the hell haven’t I watched that yet?!”) It’s written by The Wachowski Brothers, not only before The Matrix but even before Bound; it’s directed by Richard Donner; and it stars Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, and Julianne Moore; oh, and it’s about assassins (in case you hadn’t guessed), just a couple of years before Grosse Pointe Blank came out. You can literally “do the math” given that information and this movie will be pretty close to your mental result. Which is pretty good.
It doesn’t have as much of the great minimalist dialogue that made Bound and The Matrix so absorbing, but the story here is definitely about as convoluted. There are a couple of very nifty touches like the quick slip of a line about Moore’s photographs having been developed, photos that later lead Banderas to her; Moore witnessing a death via one of her many surveillance cameras in the building she lives in (she’s a surveillance expert, but it all does seem a bit Sliver-y at times).
All in all, it’s just a really watchable, ever so slightly better than average action movie with a bit of a brain. I wouldn’t go so far as some have to say it’s some kind of exception to the genre just because most of the bullets fired are silenced – Richard Donner makes sure it’s mainstream all the way – but it has enough interesting touches to hold my attention.