Assassins

Bomb Rating: 

Fearing that a story or a plot might confuse some people, Donner drops us in on an action scene that looks like it was lifted from the middle of a different Sylvester Stallone flick.

Never trust a film that has the word "ass" in its title twice. And be even more suspicious when the title has the word "ass" twice and is directed by Richard Donner, who didn't know when to stop after making "Lethal Weapon" and went on to make two pointless sequels.

Since this is a video review, let me say two quick things about watching this film on laserdisc. First of all, I almost got off my couch to check whether I had accidentally started the disc on side two instead of side one. Fearing that a story or a plot might confuse some people, Donner drops us in on an action scene that looks like it was lifted from the middle of a different Sylvester Stallone flick. If Donner had directed "Speed," he'd start it with Keanu already on the bus. The second thing is a message to the imbecile who transferred this thing onto laserdisc: "You're an imbecile!" It's oh so nice when the scenes just cut out as if someone had fallen asleep during the transfer or decided, "Aw, screw it."

The true idiocy of "Assassins" involves the assassin's code of ethics, which Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone) has, but his enemy who's trying to kill him, Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas), does not. Rath, you see, doesn't kill innocent people. He's a "good" assassin. The film also involves a lot of email transmissions from moving cars and other places lacking phone lines or apparent wireless capabilities, which really endears the film to Internet users everywhere.