“Extreme Prejudice” director Walter Hill’s most audacious crime
thriller “The Assignment” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) might eventually emerge as a cult
item after the controversial LGBT criticism about it dies down. This exploitative Canadian independent film release
concerns a disgruntled female plastic surgeon who turns a professional, pistol-packing
assassin into a female without either his knowledge or consent. “You’ve been a very bad man,” Dr. Rachel Jane
(Sigourney Weaver of “Alien”) condemns homicidal Frank Kitchen (Michelle
Rodriguez of “The Fast and The Furious”), in an audio recording left behind for
our protagonist to listen to after his surgery. “This is your opportunity for
redemption.” Basically, Dr. Jane radically changed Frank because the latter had
iced her worthless, cocaine-snorting, playboy brother, Sebastian (Adrian Hough
of “Underworld: Evolution”), who was drowning in debt to the Miami mob. Dr. Jane had given her brother enough money
to liquidate his gambling debts, but he recklessly blew every cent. After her
brother’s demise, she spent a small fortune tracking down the elusive
Kitchen. Improbably, Jane believed the sex
change would make Kitchen into a better woman than a man! After our angry protagonist recovered sufficiently
from this shocking ordeal, he sets out to exact a terrible toll on those dastards
who had a hand in the appalling sex change operation that turned his life
upside-down. Along the way, Kitchen
realizes that a long-time, criminal accomplice, Honest John Hartunian (Anthony
LaPaglia of “Empire Records”), whom he had trusted, sold him out to Jane. When everything becomes clear to him, Kitchen
realizes an attractive nurse, Johnnie (Caitlin Gerard of “Magic Mike”), with whom
he had a one-night tumble, was also a part of the set-up.
While the hopelessly frustrated Kitchen contends with his own quandary,
the megalomaniacal surgeon, Dr. Jane (Sigourney Weaver of “Alien”), who quotes
Shakespeare and considers herself an artist, has been locked up at the
Mendocino Psychiatric Facility in Northern California. Psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Galen (Tony Shalhoub of
“Men in Black”) must evaluate Jane, lashed up in a straitjacket for her own
good, to determine if she is competent to stand trial for a massacre at her
clandestine surgical facility. After
receiving an anonymous tip, the San Francisco Police had taken Jane into custody. They found the good doctor unconscious on her
own operating table surrounded by four bullet-riddled men. Jane’s male surgical nurse and sometime lover
Albert Becker (Ken Kirzinger of “Freddy vs. Jason”) lies dead with a pistol in
his hand. Ballistics matched the slugs
from Becker’s gun that he had used to kill not only the three men, but also to wound
Jane in the shoulder. Meanwhile, Kitchen sets out to find Dr. Jane
after gunning down several other criminal contacts that he suspects may have
conspired with Jane. Kitchen’s luck runs
out initially when she confronts Jane. Jane’s
henchmen take our transgendered heroine captive, but they fail to frisk
her. Ultimately, this proves to be a
fatal mistake. Meantime, Dr. Galen
refuses to believe Dr. Jane’s alibi that Kitchen shot her three bodyguards,
Albert, and wounded her. A major point
of contention between them is the existence of Frank Kitchen. Galen doesn’t
believe the man exists, despite Dr. Jane’s assertions to the contrary. Instead,
he is convinced Jane “invented Frank Kitchen to protect the memory of Albert
Becker.”
Predictably, “The Assignment” provides Hill with an
opportunity to orchestrate several indiscriminate, B-movie fire-fights that easily
rack up a double-digit body count. Apart
from its bizarre premise, this gritty exercise in murder and mayhem resembles one
of Walter Hill’s brutal, old-fashioned, shoot’em ups. Hill has helmed classics like “48 HRS,” “Hard
Times,” “Last Man Standing,” “Bullet to the Head,” “The Driver” and “Red Heat.”
Unfortunately, despite gunfire galore and the glee with which our merciless
protagonist devastates the opposition, Michelle Rodriguez is not entirely convincing
as a guy. The biggest liability is the bogus
beard that looks like it has been attached to her face with glue. Meanwhile, Hill achieves more success with
computer-generated-imagery. Rodriguez cavorts
about in private during an early scene as a nude dude displaying a hairy chest and
abundant male genitalia. Not
surprisingly, Rodriguez makes the most of this outlandish role, and she finds
herself trapped in some confrontations that are quite entertaining in a pulp
fiction way. Sigourney Weaver has a
field day as the cold-as-a-scalpel surgeon who castrated Frank. Deep down, Weaver’s Dr. Jane is thoroughly despicable;
she would have been in good company with Hitler’s demented surgeons who exploited
Jewish prisoners in the Nazi death camps.
Categorically, Weaver steals the show with her nuanced performance and
detailed character. All the other
characters blend into the background with British Columbia locales that have
been dressed to resemble San Francisco. “The
Assignment” evokes memories of an earlier Hill epic “Johnny Handsome.” In that
movie, a deformed gangster went under the knife, and the surgical procedure
changed him into a nice guy. Inevitably,
his evil past came back to haunt him. For
the record, “Turk 182” scenarist Denis Hamill dreamed up “The Assignment” back
in 1978, and Hill rewrote it many times before finally making it. Ironically, during the first few minutes of
the film, we hear Kitchen confess that he had killed a lot of people during his
time, and his comeuppance (the sex-change operation) was preferable to death. Admittedly, Hill and Hamill have a tough time
making this sex change gimmick work. Nothing about Kitchen’s discovery about
his castration is played strictly for laughs, and Hill and Hamill keep “The
Assignment” from degenerating into lowest-common-denominator camp. Whether you’re either transgendered or a
traditional enthusiast of hard-boiled thrillers, “The Assignment” (talk about a
generic title) will take you by surprise, if it doesn’t ultimately alienate
you. Obviously, this is just the kind of
movie that few people would want to see, and perhaps least of all want others to
know that they had seen. For fans of
75-year old writer & director Walter Hill, “The Assignment” qualifies as a
departure from the norm that delivers.
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