Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Assassins (1995)
Director: Richard Donner
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
An unusually serious, almost sombre thriller from the versatile action producer Joel Silver in which Stallone's a jaded assassin haunted by the past but unable to face the future. As Robert Rath, he gives his best performance for some time, abandoning the self-mockery of Demolition Man and the risible muscle-flexing of The Specialist in favour of a more contained stillness. If only director Donner had inspired Banderas with the same confidence in this essentially generic, but involving scenario; as Miguel Bain, however, an upstart obsessed with inheriting Rath's position as the world's number-one assassin, he's horribly embarrassing, acting throughout like a St Vitus Dance sufferer on amphetamines. Plotwise, things are straightforward. Julianne Moore has unwittingly acquired a computer disk containing dangerously incriminating information, Stallone's hired to kill her, but is having a mid-life career crisis, the bad guys and Interpol are slaughtering everything that moves, and Banderas is the joker in the pack. Between the hits, car chases and gunfire, there are numerous quiet scenes in darkened rooms in which Sly and Moore discover an affinity in their loneliness.Author: NF
Cast & crew
Director: Richard Donner
Producer: Richard Donner, Joel Silver, Bruce Evans, Raynold Gideon, Andrew Lazar, Jim Van Wyck
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, Julianne Moore, Anatoly Davydov, Muse Watson, Stephen Kahan, Kelly Rowan full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 133 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now