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  • Widescreen 1.85:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer ( )
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  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
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    English - Hearing Impaired
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Assassination Tango (Rental)
MGM/MGM Home Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 109 mins . M15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

There’s a certain risk in every vanity project of a writer/director. Here Robert Duvall takes a gamble and, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t quite cut it. I couldn’t agree more that he’s a fantastic actor and one who has been so for the length and breadth of his long career, but here his self-penned role has nowhere to go.

He plays an ageing assassin finally seeing the appeal of having a family. His new partner has a nine-year-old daughter he is crazy about and he has retooled his life to include her as much as possible. Unfortunately, however, when you’re an assassin, it can be hard to take her to Daddy Daughter Day at the plant.

When he receives instruction to take a job in South America, he frets he won’t be back in time for her birthday party and this occurs when his target is wounded and won’t be in place for another three weeks. So, what’s a fella to do to with his time? His passion is dancing and he starts learning about the tango from an exquisite beauty who is especially adept. In the meantime he plans his hit and sleeps with hookers that he insists call him Daddy.

Being a professional killer, he is worried about someone setting him up and this comes to pass in the days nearer the hit, until before long he’s in deep shit just trying to keep his arse out of jail, let alone get home to his new family.

This is first and foremost a character study but, unfortunately, the longer this character is on screen, the less and less we like him. He’s a grizzled and grouchy old bastard who kills people, so what’s to like? The relationship he forges with the dancer is also odd. It doesn’t really go far and, for a relatively unattractive man, she seems a little bit too keen to hang out with him. Then there’s the dancing itself, which is most definitely the highlight of this film, but it just doesn’t seem to fit in with the ugly world of organised crime. Even being used as a contrasting theme it doesn’t work as well as it is obviously intended to. Plus, the story doesn’t resolve itself by film’s end. There are multiple untied loops still hanging out of the storyline on all sides, which just lets us, the viewers, down. When the credits rolled here it was a surprise, even though I was frequently checking how long this had to go in the last 40 minutes. Perhaps the surprise lay in the fact nothing had been resolved?

To his credit, Duvall does create some fairly nice tension as his character is attempting to escape the South American continent and get home, but it isn’t really enough to save this over-indulgent and ordinary film from itself and its narcissism.

  Video
  Audio
  Extras
Contract

Visually the film looks okay, although for a film shot in 2003 it should look better. There are occasional black and white specks in the form of film artefacts and shadow detail is moderate, but not great. Sometimes the shadows get terminally murky, but the blacks can’t keep up and are more often a deeper grey. The rest of the colour palette is okay and even, with the screen ratio of 1.85:1 plus enhancement not making full use of its size. There are also outdated moments of stock footage in the opening moments of the film in which we still see the World Trade Centre towers standing tall. Perhaps this is setting the film pre-September 11? But no, there’s no mention of the year or date within or this being a period piece, and the airport security is quite high in the airport scenes, so I say poor form.

Audio-wise the score by Luis Bacalov is about the most interesting part of this film. This does well to skip between dance genres and action scenes without missing a beat. The surrounds get a working in the musical range from this Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix, but that’s about all. The subwoofer only supports the music in essence and doesn’t get overworked by a long chalk. Dialogue is long-winded and says nothing, even if it is delivered quite clearly. Luciana Pedraza is introduced in this film as Duvall’s dance interest in South America and she has a strangely compelling voice that is partially masculine yet all feminine and very interesting to listen to.

Accompanying this film is the original theatrical trailer in which we get a much more action packed movie than the film we are delivered. If you hire this film, don’t watch the trailer first due to spoilers but, ironically, you could save a lot of time by doing so as it is in essence a better version.

As a rental I recommend skipping this one unless you are after a slow-winding dissection of dancing and killing people. I thought it entirely too long and lazy and when finally getting near a climax, doesn’t deliver anything remotely near the kind of answers we deserve having sat through the whole 109 minutes of the film.

Skip this one on your pursuit of a decent rental.


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  •   And I quote...
    "A rubbishy name describes a rubbishy film from writer/director/star Robert Duvall. "
    - Jules Faber
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Teac DVD-990
    • TV:
          AKAI CT-T29S32S 68cm
    • Speakers:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Centre Speaker:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Surrounds:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Subwoofer:
          Akai
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          Standard Component RCA
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