The Assassin (2015)
So slow, youโll be begging this assassin to kill youโฆ
Presentation:
From the director of Millenium Mambo comes a different type of Wuxia martial arts film. Hou Hsiao-hsien utilizes his signature slow cinema style in telling the story of a morally conflicted assassin in China. This sounds paradoxical as audiences would typically expect faster paced storytelling for an action, which becomes the distinction and biggest weakness of this film. Itโs a stretch to classify this as an action film as fight sequences last maybe 30 seconds while the average take is 3 minutes. The cinematography is the most interesting aspect of this film, utilizing a 4:3 aspect ratio to capture the tall mountains and birch forests of Chinaโs beautiful landscapes. However, this is arguable Houโs most cinematography focused film with a strange choice of frame rates, which suit the action scenes but not the rest of the drama. The visuals end up having a real life HDR quality to them, which I found off-putting from the traditional 24 fps of cinema. The Taiwanese director tries hard to make an art house film, with meaningless black and white scenes, save for a few good shots of curtains flowing in the foreground.
Conclusion:
To give credit where itโs due, this is something different in the world of martial arts films. Western cinephiles will likely applaud this film for that reason alone, but if youโve watched Chinese Wuxia soap operas before then you should not be blinded by this novelty. The archery effects are cool, but the fight sequences are ridiculous, which would be forgivable if they leaned into the Wuxia poetic abstraction, but this film goes for a stark realism instead. Shu Qi, while beautiful, is probably the least believable assassin of all time, at 5 feet tall, ridiculously disarming swords 3 times her reach with a tiny dagger. The choreography is mediocre compared to martial arts focused films, not helped by the extremely long lensing. The assassin, Shu Qi, should be the draw of this film, but the narrative focuses on her cousin and the historical drama instead as she barely speaks a word. I think Hou is one of the most overrated directors amongst cinephiles, and I found this film a clichรฉd embarrassment. Itโs feels like an old man making what he thinks young people will like, except itโs still boring. At this point Iโm hating, but I genuinely need to vent after he wasted another 2 hours of my life. The focus is wrong, no one is likable, Hou is really just grifting on cinephiles to give misunderstood praise because he likes to make the slowest pictures possible. And they are not even well composed, 90% primarily centered framed. Kill me, please!
Recommendations
So slow, youโll be begging this assassin to kill youโฆ