Film Review: Little action, lots of waiting in ‘The Assassin’
“The Assassin” — Taiwan’s entry in the 2016 Oscar Foreign Language category — is billed as the first martial arts film from Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. But it’s not your stereotypical martial arts action film. In fact, its qualification for that genre is dubious.
There’s a whole lot of “arts” and a little “martial”-ness but “action” barely figures in the equation. This probably won’t surprise Hou’s fan base, who are used to his languid pace.
The plot is either very simple ... or very complicated and executed so subtly that it flew under my radar.
The clearest moment is right at the beginning, when on-screen text tells us that the setting is 9th-century China and gives us a few historical facts about that period. After that, we’re on our own.
As a child, title character Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) was kidnapped and put under the care of a hermetic nun (Sheu Fang-Yi), who has raised her to be a perfect hitwoman. But the opening sequence in black and white — “The Assassin” turns to color after six or seven minutes — shows her blowing an assignment and displaying some doubt about continuing with her profession (I think). She is given one more job, after which she will quit. (We’re still about 20 minutes away from the first fight scene, which ends before you can say “Nie Yinniang.”)
Unfortunately her last target is Tian Jian (Chang Chen), the governor of Weibo province, who was her childhood friend (I think) and to whom she was promised in marriage (I’m sure). She is understandably conflicted (I think) and eventually acts one way or the other (I have no idea).
The pace increases tenfold when a bunch of musicians and dancing girls show up but disappointingly vanish in a few minutes. Then a pregnant woman seems to be roasting herself by hugging a pillar (I really have no idea).
This tale is interrupted three or four more times by fights, only one of which lasted more than a minute.
Even the film’s most favorable reviews include sentences like “This may not appeal to martial arts fans” and “Not for everybody” and “agonizingly slow-paced” (if it can be said to be paced at all).
While many of these remarks are righteous warnings, you get the feeling that some are also intended as compliments.
Hou is sometimes praised for daring to hold shots for an uncommonly long time, with nobody speaking or noticeably moving. Perhaps he figures that if an image looks beautiful (or even just nice), it’s worth staying on it twice as long as any other director would.
If that’s the case, Hou has been too timid and missed some great opportunities. If twice as long is twice as good, why not double that? Hell, why not go all the way down that slippery slope and just make us stare at a still photo for an hour and a half?
Even most bad reviews rave about how beautiful or transcendent or ravishing the visuals are. There are several such images — mostly involving mist, cloudy mountains, or, in interiors, layers of gauzy curtains — though the first one I found worth noting occurs two-thirds into the movie.
None of my colleagues are prevaricating or acting in bad faith. I occasionally wonder whether such hugely disparate reactions may actually reflect something physiological and inherent, in the manner of prescription drug reactions. Meat to you, poison to me.
“The Assassin” is boring to me and transcendent to others, those lucky so-and-sos. It might replace Hirokazu Koreeda’s 1995 “Maborosi” at the top of my snooze list. Unfortunately, the only way to be sure is to watch them as a double feature, and my aging heart might not be able to handle it.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).