where was the movie the assignment filmed

The Assignment (1997)

Jack Shaw has experienced the terror first-hand. He's a top CIA agent who's tracked international killer-for-hire Carlos "The Jackal" Sanchez for over twenty years and barely survived Carlos' devastating bombing of a Parisian cafe. Now, he finally gets a break when he discovers Carlos' dead ringer: American naval officer and dedicated family man Annibal Ramirez.

Filming Locations

Jerusalem, Jerusalem District, Israel Acre, North District, Israel Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv District, Israel Israel Laval, Québec, Canada Montréal, Québec, Canada Hudson, Québec, Canada

Filming Dates

11 February 1996 - 27 June 1996

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The Movie Network, Allegro Films, Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit Fund (CPTC), Super Écran, Gouvernement du Québec, Triumph Films, Satch-Mo, Program de Credits of Impuc

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‘the assignment’: film review | tiff 2016.

Sigourney Weaver stars as a twisted surgeon and Michelle Rodriguez as the man she turns into a woman in Walter Hill's '(Re)Assignment.'

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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A demented pulp fiction about a brilliant surgeon who creates a Frankenstein monster by performing a sex change on the scumbag assassin who killed her brother, The Assignment (previously titled (Re)Assignment ) is, by any objective standard, a disreputable slice of bloody sleaze. But there’s also no question that veteran director and co-writer Walter Hill knows exactly what he’s doing here, wading waist-deep into Frank Miller Sin City territory and using genre tropes to explore some provocatively, even outrageously transgressive propositions. For longtime fans of the filmmaker, this Canadian-made low-budget revenge yarn will be embraced as Hill’s most entertaining and, on the terms it sets for itself, accomplished film in some time. It’s an instant cult item.

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In a public climate arguably more saturated with discussions of gender than ever in the history of the world, Hill and his co-screenwriter Denis Hamill make subversive creative use of the topic in ways that are both brainy and amusingly provocative. The catalyst for all the mayhem is genius, but now defrocked plastic surgeon Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver in intimidatingly imposing mode), whose revenge upon low-life hitman Frank Kitchen, who took out her brother, is to capture him and apply her expertise by turning him into a woman (Michelle Rodriguez); in a world where transgenderism is now an accepted fact of life, this is one example where it is neither voluntary nor desired.

The Bottom Line A deliciously transgressive and smart classic B movie.

Intercutting between Rachel’s interrogation by shrink Dr. Ralph Green (Tony Shalhoub ) and the hatching of the now-female Frank’s extensive revenge-taking for what’s been done to him/her physically results in a great deal of exposition. But Hill keeps it lively and interesting, on one hand by supplying the brilliant Rachel with lots of blunt and high-toned commentary about how and why she’s done what she did; on an intellectual level, she and Hannibal Lecter would be an even match.

On the other, there’s the spectacle of watching Frank come to grips — and this is meant literally — with “her” own new body. Without any self-consciousness, Rodriguez enacts a thorough physical self-inspection from top to bottom, and her former tough guy character remains infuriated by having been deprived of the equipment he used to enjoy. All the same, she eventually reconnects with a young nurse and part-time good-times girl (Caitlin Gerard) “he” had hooked up with just prior to his unwanted conversion.

A good part of the action involves the extensive revenge Frank exacts upon a local San Francisco gangster, Honest John (Anthony LaPaglia ), for an earlier betrayal; plenty of bad guys get blown away here in bloody fashion, and Frank really is remorseless. In this world, much of it set in San Francisco’s Chinatown (actually shot in Vancouver), everyone is guilty — or, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven , everyone’s got it coming.

Hill, production designer Renee Read and cinematographer James Liston immediately establish and then maintain the look of a seedy urban world defined by dirty browns and blacks, as well as by dimly lit streets, a lonely diner and a seedy old hotel; this is as noir as it gets these days. On numerous occasions, sequences end with visual punctuation courtesy of graphic comics-style illustrations.

The somber tone and low-end production values may not be exactly in tune with young neo-noir enthusiasts, but more seasoned fans of the genre and the filmmaker will recognize and embrace Hill’s use of noir to play with and comment on topical issues in a deliciously subversive way, political correctness be damned. At the same time, however, a witty intellectual loftiness hovers over everything thanks to the erudite remarks ceaselessly pouring from the mouth of Weaver’s doctor, who likes to confound her interrogator with frequent references to Shakespeare.   

Weaver’s terrifically articulated performance neatly establishes the top side of the film’s high/low dynamic. For her part of the equation, Rodriguez, with momentary exceptions, maintains a virulent charge of fury, anger and disgust with what’s been done to him/her, something that quite plausibly drives the vengeful mission. It’s a story of two killers, one of whom operates from the brain, the other from more basic instincts, and together they’re quite a pair for one movie.

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation)

Production: SBS Films

Cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Tony Shalhoub , Anthony LaPaglia , Caitlin Gerard, Sigourney Weaver

Director: Walter Hill

Screenwriters: Walter Hill, Denis Hamill

Producers: Said Ben Said, Michel Merkt

Director of photography: James Liston

Production designer: Renee Read

Costume designer: Ellen Anderson

Editor: Philip Norden

Music: Giorgio Moroder , Raney Shockne

Casting: Sheila Jaffe , Candice Elzinga

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• Review: In <i>The Assignment</i>, Michelle Rodriguez Is a Hitman Caught Between Worlds

Review: In The Assignment , Michelle Rodriguez Is a Hitman Caught Between Worlds

W riter-producer-director and pulp maestro Walter Hill has been rattling cages and delivering quality thrills since the early 1970s. He made his directorial debut with Hard Times (1975), a scrappy, bruising drama starring Charles Bronson as a Depression-era bare-knuckles boxer. He’s also the guy behind the New York City street-gang extravaganza The Warriors (1979), the stolen-gold nail biter Trespass (1992) and The Driver (1978), with Ryan O’Neal, the ruminative getaway drama that helped inspire Edgar Wright’s upcoming car-chase musical Baby Driver .

Hill has influenced plenty of filmmakers—not just Wright, but also Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few—though he hasn’t been particularly prolific as a director in recent years. His new film, The Assignment, isn’t likely to win him any new friends: Michelle Rodriguez stars as killer-for-hire Frank Kitchen, whose life is upended when he’s captured and knocked out by a gang of baddies, only to wake up wrapped in bandages—and a woman. The surgeon genius behind this transformation is steely-cool Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver ), a straitjacketed jailbird who tells her own story to an earnest prison shrink played by Tony Shalhoub. Between Dr. Kay’s calculating testimony and and Frank’s sometimes anguished first-person account, delivered in voice-over, we piece together exactly what happened to Frank and how he/she went about wreaking revenge.

Not all of Hill’s movies are great, and The Assignment certainly isn’t. Maybe, in the strictest terms, it isn’t even any good. But even a mediocre Walter Hill film has more style and energy—and a finer sense of the sweet spot between joy and despair—than ninety percent of the action thrillers that get made today. Considering its over-the-top plot mechanics, The Assignment isn’t quite as nutso and passionate as it ought to be. Even the violence, gritty at times, feels a little impersonal and detached. But the film’s tawdry precision is compelling by itself.

In the opening sequence, we see a face in profile, almost entirely obscured by gauze, as a throaty voice launches into a preamble: “I killed a lot of guys…” Before we meet the teller of the tale—as a she, she doesn’t even have a name—we meet the man she used to be. Frank is a Casanova with piercing eyes and soot-black facial hair that could have been lifted from a 1960s dime-store toy, the one where you use a magnetic stylus to arrange piles of metal shavings, encased in a blister-pack bubble, into outlandish beards and sideburns for a cartoon man’s face.

In other words, it looks fake. But even the exaggerated macho-ness of that hair may be a kind of intentional overstatement. Frank goes out and picks up a young woman, Johnnie (Caitlin Gerard). They have hot, rowdy sex, and Johnnie suggests she might like to see Frank again. He’s positioned, perfectly, to be the quintessential clueless, oafish guy who never calls again.

But Frank does call Johnnie again—only he does so after he’s no longer Frank, after his previous identity, with all its he-man hallmarks, has been quite literally cut away. Rodriguez gives a smart, sharp performance here. She’s playing a character that is, almost literally, a cartoon. Every once in a while, Hill freezes a frame and transforms the image into a literal comic-book panel, a way of reminding that we’re watching something beyond reality (and a device he used in his own cut of The Warriors years ago, before it became commonplace). But as Rodriguez plays them, her character’s anguish and confusion are hardly cartoony.

She’s lost in her new identity, but the problem is less that she’s adjusting to being a woman than that she’s learning new things about being human. She adopts a pit-bull named Poncho. He’s as tender-tough as she is, as unsure exactly how he should act or what he should be. Rodriguez has the face of someone who’s just feeling her way along. Everything is a new puzzle, but there are pleasant surprises too. When her face registers relief or pleasure, it’s like the sun elbowing a thundercloud out of the way.

When The Assignment played at the Toronto Film Festival last fall—at that time, it was called (re)Assignment, a much better title, though its earlier working title, Tomboy, was perhaps best of all—it drew criticism for being insensitive toward, or at least cavalier about, transgender issues. But even if you discount the fact that films aren’t required to be public service announcements—in fact, they’re usually pretty bad when they are—the ideas behind The Assignment are more complex than they might seem on the surface. Many of them are also pure Walter Hill: The script was written by journalist, novelist and screenwriter Denis Hamill more than 30 years ago, and it borrows pulp elements of previous Hill films like Johnny Handsome (1989), in which Mickey Rourke plays a deformed gangster whose face is transformed by plastic surgery.

In Hill’s movies, men make mistakes right and left, and suffer for them. In The Assignment, Frank doesn’t choose to become a woman, and he desperately wants not to be one. But what if his enforced rebirth represents a second chance, a chance to be better? That’s one of the ideas The Assignment, in its sometimes awkward way, flirts with. It also crawls through the dust toward another cruel reality: Maybe it takes a woman who used to be a man to understand just how much of a man’s world this really is.

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“ The Assignment ” is a film that arrives in theaters having already inspired vast outpourings of anger from two groups —the transgender community, which appears to be offended by its very premise, and action buffs, who are put off both by the premise (albeit for different reasons) and what they feel is a lazy execution that fails to offer the requisite thrills. While I am sympathetic to the complaints of both groups (somewhat more for the former) and recognize that it is indeed deeply flawed in many areas, I cannot quite agree with either. This is a modestly scaled B-movie by one of the best genre filmmakers of our time, Walter Hill , that has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn’t quite live up (or down, depending on your perspective) to its borderline sleazy premise.

And what is that premise, you ask? In a nutshell, Frank Kitchen ( Michelle Rodriguez … just keep reading) is a ruthless San Francisco hitman who runs afoul of Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver ), a brilliant but deranged surgeon who has lost her license for conducting various rogue experiments. Frank kills Dr. Kay’s brother, and the good doctor seeks vengeance and experimental research into the importance of physical identity on the psyche. She arranges with crime boss Honest John Hartunian ( Anthony LaPaglia ) to have him grab Frank and bring him to her secret lab, where she proceeds to perform gender reassignment surgery on him. Dr. Kay asserts that the surgery will take away Frank’s desire to kill. Needless to say, Frank sees things a little differently, and, once she discovers that the surgery cannot be reversed, she methodically hatches a grisly revenge plot on everyone involved with her transformation from Honest John and his goons all the way up to Dr. Kay. Helping Frank in her quest is Johnnie ( Caitlin Gerard ), a nurse with whom Frank had a one-night stand before his transformation and who doesn’t seem particularly nonplussed by recent developments, though it seems that she may be harboring a few secrets of her own.

At first blush, one can easily understand why the transgender community might be a tad put off by the very existence of “The Assignment,” but the actual film is nowhere near as offensive as it might initially seem. For one thing, the film as a whole is so willfully and deliberately pulpy in tone (I could easily see a short version of this tale fitting perfectly into the confines of a “ Sin City ” film) that it is hard to take the alleged provocations on display with any degree of seriousness—this is a film that is so archetypal in nature that the sort-of sweethearts at its center are literally named Frank(ie) and Johnnie. Additionally, to suggest that Frank is meant to represent all transgender people is nonsense because he is clearly not one himself, and, outside of the obvious physical construct, little about him changes after undergoing his forced surgery. I would also point out that no less of a filmmaker than Pedro Almodovar used the notion of unwilling gender reassignment surgery as a plot point in his own unabashed genre exercise, “ The Skin I Live In ,” and no one seemed especially put off by it even though the deployment there was arguably more questionable from a taste perspective than what is seen here.

That said, “The Assignment” is still a problematic work in many ways from a purely cinematic perspective. The screenplay by Hill & Denis Hamill (which Hill has been toying with since the late ‘70s) is an awkward construction with much of the story presented in a series of flashbacks, as the now-incarcerated Dr. Kay recounts the story to another psychiatrist ( Tony Shalhoub ). This concept is especially problematic since Hill is at his best when he allows characters to define themselves purely through their actions instead of relentlessly explaining themselves as they do here. The film also screams out for a more overtly stylized visual treatment in the vein of something like his great “ Streets of Fire ”—a fact underlined by the occasional bits of black-and-white photography and comic book-style transitions—that might have also helped to underscore the kind of pulpy approach Hill was clearly going for. Another big problem, at least at first, is the casting of Michelle Rodriguez as Frank. There is nothing wrong with her performance but the early scenes in which she portrays the male version of Frank, complete with a wildly unconvincing beard and a lingering close-up of his genitalia for good measure, do inspire a few bad laughs right when the film is trying to establish itself. For some viewers, it may never recover from that.

For those who can get beyond that, “The Assignment” contains plenty of points of interest. Sigourney Weaver is pretty much a blast throughout as the snidely condescending doctor who sets all of the events into motion. As for Rodriguez, once she sheds the beard, her performance improves greatly. Obviously, we know she can do the steely-eyed badass stuff as well as anyone else but she also gets a couple of quieter moments amidst the chaos where she displays a more vulnerable side without stepping out of character—in one, she consults a doctor about whether the surgery can be reversed and begins shyly inquiring about certain personal details regarding her new equipment. In the other, she is about to go to bed with Johnnie when she realizes that she has no idea of how to approach lovemaking from a female perspective. (“You’ll do fine,” she is reassured in a line that is both funny and strangely touching.) As for Hill, while he is clearly working with a lower budget than usual here (with Vancouver substituting, not too convincingly, for San Francisco), he is still able to establish a convincingly noir attitude toward the material and the scenes of violence are done in a spare and economical style that is a relief from the over-the-top pyrotechnics of most current action films. (He also gets bonus points for employing Giorgio Moroder to deliver a cheerfully retro synth score.)

It is easy to see how the dramatic excesses of the plot could prove offensive to the transgender community, though I can just as easily see “The Assignment” one day becoming a cult favorite in the way that the once-controversial “ Cruising ” would eventually find some fans within the gay community that once scorned it. As an exercise in unapologetic pulp fiction, it gets the job done in a smart, efficient and slyly subversive manner. As the latest entry in the Walter Hill filmography, it definitely belongs on the second tier. Even though it may not be the equal to a classic like “ The Driver ” or “Streets of Fire,” it will do until that next masterwork does come along.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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The Assignment (2017)

Rated R for graphic nudity, violence, sexuality, language and drug use.

Michelle Rodriguez as Frank Kitchen / Tomboy

Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Rachel Kay

Tony Shalhoub as Dr. Ralph Galen

Caitlin Gerard as Johnnie

Anthony LaPaglia as Honest John Hartunian

Paul McGillion as Paul Wincott

• Walter Hill

Writer (story)

• Denis Hamill

Cinematographer

• James Liston
• Phil Norden
• Giorgio Moroder
• Raney Shockne

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The assignment.

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Jack Shaw (Donald Sutherland) has experienced the terror first-hand. He's a top CIA agent who's tracked international killer-for-hire Carlos "The Jackal" Sanchez for over twenty years and barely survived Carlos' devastating bombing of a Parisian cafe. Now, he finally gets a break when he discovers Carlos' dead ringer: American naval officer and dedicated family man Annibal Ramirez (Aidan Quinn). With the aid of his Israeli Intelligence counterpart, Amos (Ben Kingsley), Jack trains Annibal to impersonate Carlos through a series of harrowing physical and psychological exercises and draw the real killer out of hiding and into an elaborate trap.

© 1997 Allegro Film Productions V Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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• Tomboy, a Revenger's Tale
• (Re)Assignment

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• "A deliciously transgressive and smart classic B movie."  Todd McCarthy : The Hollywood Reporter
• "[It] gracelessly mashes together hardboiled crime-melodrama cliches and an unintentionally funny 'Oh no! I'm a chick now!!' gender-change narrative hook."  Dennis Harvey : Variety
• "The filmmaker’s touch is completely lost here, and the only danger the film winds up posing is to the time spent by those who choose to watch it."  Kevin Jagernauth : The Playlist
• "The film's dialogue is entertainingly hard-boiled, and the performances knowing without ever being arch."  Keith Uhlich : Slant
• "Walter Hill (...) has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn’t quite live up (...) to its borderline sleazy premise (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"  Peter Sobczynski : rogerebert.com
• "Gender-switching hitman thriller is staggering misfire (...) a strong contender for 2016’s worst movie (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"  Benjamin Lee : The Guardian

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The assignment.

Directed by Walter Hill

A revenger's tale.

Ace assassin Frank Kitchen is double crossed by gangsters and falls into the hands of rogue surgeon known as The Doctor who turns him into a woman. The hitman, now a hitwoman, sets out for revenge, aided by a nurse named Johnnie who also has secrets.

Michelle Rodriguez Sigourney Weaver Tony Shalhoub Caitlin Gerard Anthony LaPaglia Paul McGillion Ken Kirzinger Paul Lazenby Zak Santiago Adrian Hough Alex Zahara Chad Riley Jason Asuncion Darryl Quon Hugo Ateo Sergio Osuna Terry Chen Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle Caroline Chan Lia Lam Eltie Pearce

Director Director

Walter Hill

Producers Producers

Saïd Ben Saïd Michel Merkt Sarah Borch-Jacobsen Kevin Chneiweiss Todd Giroux John Lind Harvey Kahn

Writers Writers

Denis Hamill Walter Hill

Casting Casting

Candice Elzinga Sheila Jaffe Sandra Couldwell

Editor Editor

Phil Norden

Cinematography Cinematography

James Liston

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

John Lind Annabelle Wilczur

Lighting Lighting

James M. Jackson Cameron Root Jason Weir

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Dale H. Jahraus Bruce Borland

Production Design Production Design

Set decoration set decoration.

Meredith Garstin A. Blair Stevens

Special Effects Special Effects

Visual effects visual effects.

Geena Renk Kris Wood Brent Boulet Jess Brown

Stunts Stunts

Jason Asuncion Melissa R. Stubbs Paul Lazenby

Composers Composers

Raney Shockne Giorgio Moroder

Sound Sound

James Fonnyadt Bryson Dodwell Bill Mellow Kelly Cole Daniel Cardona

Costume Design Costume Design

Ellen Anderson

Makeup Makeup

Courtney Frey Joel Echallier Agnieszka Echallier

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Jessica Rain

SBS Productions

Canada France USA

Releases by Date

11 sep 2016, 08 jun 2016, 27 apr 2017, 19 oct 2017, 23 nov 2017, 03 mar 2016, 23 mar 2017, 02 may 2017, 07 jun 2017, 03 apr 2016, releases by country.

• Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
• Theatrical M/16

South Korea

• Theatrical 18
• Digital 16 DVD & Bluray
• Physical 15 DVD
• Digital R internet

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Popular reviews

Review by Sally Jane Black 12

CW: HRT/transition-related surgery

We are not born into the wrong body. We are born into the wrong society.

As I take hormones to alter my body, I am not gaining a new body. My body is naturally reacting to the estrogen and testosterone-suppressors I am putting into it. It's still the same body I have always had. It's a different shape. It's softer. But it's the same body I have had for 35 years. When I get the surgery I need, I will not be losing my body, either. This is the right body for me. My transformation is merely one of presentation. It is no more radical than any other bodily changes a person undergoes.

We are not born…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★½ 10

Action! - The Unlikely Rumble: Hill v Hyams

So we end the first half of our combat with Hill returning to the vengeance genre, bringing his Western sensibilities to a picture where guns and retribution are the order of the day.

Michelle Rodriguez is great in this role, while her first appearance as a "man" was laughably poor. The beard and everything looked terribly fake, and it was even funnier that she was acknowledged twice in the closing credits. Now, having said that, when the wicked revengeful doctor, nicely played by Weaver, completed the "sex change" on Michelle's character Frank, Rodriguez did an great job modulating her voice and making it more rougher, and even as she leaned over and…

Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★★★★½ 12

100% Ray Blanchard's fault Signourney Weaver has to be out here force-femming mob hit men into Michelle Rodriguez to obtain cast-iron proof that gender dysphoria is an innate condition irreducible to paraphilia in the year of our lord 2016, an obvious fact known to science in the 19th Century and then violently memory-holed as needed by whatever variety of fascist forgetting this was expedient for ever since. If nothing else, The Assignment might be useful to watch with clueless boomer (grand)parents in order to get them to think constructively about the experience of gender dysphoria??? U could tell them before sitting down to watch that there was a reason u checked Girlfight out of Blockbuster so many times and that…

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

So cheap, so in love with its own lurid pulp. It is as unplausible as its underworld, which is part of what so pleasurable about it. That cheapstake vile movie atmosphere is the movie, pure surface ugliness that never suggests the real thing, but just drown in its own texture. The kind of preposterous film with a mad doctor quoting Shakespeare and Poe for added gravitas that everyone treats for the bullshit it actually is. Rodriguez's Frank Kitchen is so good at what he does, The Assignment is never an actual an action movie, what it does purpose is a double narrative crashing on itself (Hill's usual hunter/hunted motif taking to an unique lurid extreme), the idea of identity becoming…

Review by matt lynch ★★★

Hill comes right out and says that this should stand on style alone...it doesn't (and yikes some of those animated transitions are dire), but his (somewhat clueless, but still) insistence on keeping this a pulpy shock noir is kinda admirable.

Review by Dawson Joyce ★

With a premise this risky, unique, and thought-provoking and a more than capable cast and crew onboard, it is such a shame to see The Assignment come out not an enjoyably trashy piece of exploitation fun but instead a brutally boring, utterly lifeless mess of a film lacking in both strong characterization and entertaining action, and the fact that this was a passion project of director Walter Hill since the 70's makes the joyless and mundane end result even more baffling. Also, this film officially disproves the idiotic to begin with theory that lead star Michelle Rodriguez looks too masculine.

Review by Jesse Snoddon ★ 2

"It's hard to go back to Frank Kitchen when you look like a chick"

After stupidly named hitman Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez) takes out Dr. Rachel Kay's (Sigourney Weaver) brother, Kay enacts revenge by having Frank abducted and performing a sex change operation on him against his will. 

As a fan of Walter Hill's movies, it pains me to say this is awful. Without even getting into the more controversial elements (to the film's credit Hill seems to be trying to make the point that we are who we are inside and physically changing someone won't alter that if it's against there will...but Hill is likely not the person to have this conversation and in over his head on that…

Review by comrade_yui 2

walter hill not being a provocative reactionary dumbass makes this way less exploitative than it actually should be. it's jam-packed with several elements of his previous works, and i can't help but see this as a return to form after his dreadful output since the end of the 90s. it's slick, peppered with punchy dialogue and efficiently constructed in the way that his best films are. at the time this came out, i probably would have despised it just from the premise alone, but at this point it feels really harmless compared to the relatively high toxicity that we get from zahler, snyder and bay. reading interviews with hill and seeing the actual text here, it's clear that this film…

Review by Biscoito18 ½ 3

I'd never realized how feminine Michelle Rodriguez was until seeing her trying to pass as a biological man.

It's impossible to buy the illusion, not only because she is a very famous actress, but also because the make up is terrible and her silhouette, voice and walk remains the same.

Looks more like a bad comedy sketch (they even gave her a hilarious CGI penis and hairy chest!!!) but the tone is so dead serious that nothing works properly. It's a VERY strange movie with a very strange editing too.

Trying to adjust the tone, they even add some cartoons here and there to give a grindhouse/hq vibe to it, but ends up being another lame aspect in the weak…

Review by Rachel

Shame on you Sigourney 

Why the name change to Tomboy on UK Netflix? Like it don’t make it a good movie

Review by Cinema_Strikes ★★½ 2

This came out to a lot of kerfluffle - seemingly mostly from people who hadn’t seen the movie - about whether it was offensive in its treatment of trans rights, but hardly seems worth the bother of getting offended. It’s a fairly bog standard pulpy action revenge thriller, and the central issue of Michelle Rodriguez getting forcibly gender swapped doesn’t seem to have any legitimate bearing on trans issues - the character is not a trans person, but someone who had their body altered without their consent (more akin to the Remade in China Mieville’s Bas-Lag series), which seems an entirely different issue, at least to this admittedly ignorant viewer. I’m sure I’m missing plenty of nuance, but honestly this…

Review by Scout Tafoya ★★★½

www.rogerebert.com/mzs/the-unloved-part-47-the-assignment

Hill snapped into place on another level for me when I was watching this and remembered the scene in The Driver where he smashes up that gorgeous orange Mercedes. I watched it with my dad when I was in college and neither of us understood it. Years pass and I'm watching this and I'm thinking about other moments in Hill films where characters try to sort of shed their skin because of Hill's existential body dysmorphia and my brain feeds me the scene and says without hesitation "Well there's that scene in The Driver when O'Neal destroys the car because he can't tear his skin off and reveal the bottomless void in his soul." Like somehow, at some…

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The Assignment

• An American naval officer is recruited for an operation to eliminate his lookalike, the infamous terrorist Carlos The Jackal.
• 1986. In his civilian clothes while on shore leave in Jerusalem, Lieutenant Commander Annibal Ramirez of the US Navy is captured and interrogated by who he eventually learns is Mossad in a case of mistaken identity. Because of the resemblance, they believed him to be Carlos the Jackal, one of if not the most wanted and dangerous terrorist in the world. Shortly following, Henry Fields, using the alias Jack Shaw, he the Paris deputy chief of CIA counter-terrorism whose primary mission for at least the past ten years has been to get rid of Carlos in any way possible, tries to recruit Ramirez to work on a covert CIA-Mossad operation to stop Carlos' terrorist activities with the ultimate goal of Carlos' capture or death. The plan is for Ramirez to impersonate Carlos, in the process discrediting Carlos in the eyes of his current KGB backers, and thus effectively ending his career as a terrorist, with nowhere he can longer hide. After an initial reluctance on Ramirez's part, Shaw is able to convince him to do the job. The rigorous training is to ensure that Ramirez not only looks like Carlos, but instinctively behaves like Carlos, even to those closest to him, which also means how he makes love as one of Ramirez's interactions is to be with one of Carlos' old girlfriends. Beyond the potential problem of getting caught by Carlos or his associates, Ramirez may have problems stomaching his work and reconciling it with his real life as a military man. If he is able to carry out the mission and survive, the bigger question becomes whether being Carlos will have transformed his inherent being permanently. — Huggo
• An American naval officer is recruited by the government to impersonate the most vicious and cold-blooded terrorist there is in order to catch him. But are things really what they seem to be? — Steve Richer <[email protected]>
• The film opens to the sounds of a couple having sex. Afterwards, Carlos the Jackal (Aidan Quinn) kills a spider in its web with his cigarette and evicts the woman(Lucie Laurier) from his room because he claims he has work to do. He is seen donning a disguise, and he walks to a cafe where CIA agent Jack Shaw (Donald Sutherland) is sitting at a table outdoors. He recognizes Shaw and asks for a light. Shaw does not recognize Carlos, because of his disguise, but he turns to watch Carlos enter the cafe. He watches as Carlos detonates a grenade, killing dozens of people. The film shows an event of attacking the OPEC meeting by the Jackal and his fellows in 1975. In the present day, Carlos is apprehended in an open air market and brutally interrogated by a Mossad commander named Amos (Ben Kingsley). Carlos claims to actually be a US Naval officer named Annibal Ramirez whose identification was lost in the chaos of his arrest. Amos confirms his identity and lets him go, stunned that Ramirez looks exactly like Carlos. Back at home, Ramirez is visited by Shaw who tries to recruit him to play Carlos' double. Ramirez is so embittered by his rough treatment in Amos' hands, that he insists he will sue and flatly rejects the idea of portraying Carlos. Shaw persists, wooing Ramirez on several occasions. He finally convinces Ramirez by showing him a child in a hospital who he claims is a victim of one of Carlos' bombings. Amos and Shaw train Ramirez at a remote location. Much of his training is devoted to situational awareness and internalizing details of Carlos' life. His training concludes with one of Carlos' ex-mistresses training Ramirez in how to make love like Carlos. The plan to catch Carlos revolves around convincing the KGB, which supports much of his terrorism, that he has begun to work with the CIA. The team lures one of Carlos' girlfriends to Libya, where Ramirez meets up with her, successfully posing as Carlos, even during their lovemaking. The girlfriend has become an informant for the French, however. Several French agents arrive at their apartment, and Ramirez is forced to kill them to survive. He is horrified at having to kill allies in his undercover operation. Carlos sends an assassin to kill the girlfriend in France, ordering him to leave Europe through London. The assassin happens to be in Heathrow airport at the same time as Ramirez, and he quickly realizes he is an impostor after Ramirez doesn't recognize him. The assassin forces Ramirez into a bathroom and a struggle ensues. Amos rushes in and manages to kill the assassin before being fatally shot. After Amos' death, the CIA shuts down the mission and Ramirez returns home. Back with his wife, he makes love to her as Carlos would, and she is disturbed by the change in his personality. The next day, at his son's little league game, he gets into a confrontation with another father and nearly kills him. Shaw bails him out of jail, and both men are clearly suffering deeply by not being able to finish their mission and kill Carlos. They head to East Berlin and conspicuously meet with each other. The KGB sees Ramirez meeting with Shaw and assumes Carlos has turned on them. They raid his hotel, but as they try to arrest them, he escapes. Shaw and Ramirez are waiting outside the hotel for him, and Ramirez fights Carlos on the bank of a river. It's impossible to tell which is the real Carlos during the struggle. As one of the men is being held under water by the other, Shaw comes upon them and shoots the man above the water several times. He realizes that he has shot Ramirez, and Carlos swims away. Ramirez presses Shaw to leave him and chase Carlos, but Shaw insists that their plan has worked and Carlos is a marked man by the KGB. One way or another, Shaw points out that Carlos' days as a terrorist are over. The deaths of Ramirez and his family are staged by Shaw, and in the final scene, the family are safely cavorting on a beach. Ramirez moves to kill a spider in its web with his cigarette, but appears to change his mind.

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The Assignment

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The Assignment

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The Assignment streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "The Assignment" streaming on Hoopla or for free with ads on The Roku Channel, Tubi TV. It is also possible to rent "The Assignment" on Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Apple TV, Vudu, Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand online and to download it on Amazon Video, Microsoft Store, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Apple TV, Vudu.

Where does The Assignment rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Streaming charts last updated: 1:16:29 PM, 05/17/2024

The Assignment is 11793 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 5953 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Red 11 but less popular than The Student.

Ace assassin Frank Kitchen is double crossed by gangsters and falls into the hands of rogue surgeon known as The Doctor who turns him into a woman. The hitman, now a hitwoman, sets out for revenge, aided by a nurse named Johnnie who also has secrets.

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Home > The Assignment Ending Explained

• The Assignment Ending Explained
• UPDATED: September 19, 2023

Table of Contents

“The Assignment” is a thrilling action film that delves into the world of revenge and identity. Directed by Walter Hill, the movie follows the story of Frank Kitchen, a hitman who undergoes an involuntary gender reassignment surgery as an act of revenge. The film’s ending leaves viewers with a lot to unpack and understand.

In the final moments of the film, Frank Kitchen, played by Michelle Rodriguez, confronts his former surgeon, Dr. Rachel Kay (Sigourney Weaver). Throughout the movie, it becomes clear that Dr. Kay orchestrated Frank’s transformation as a form of punishment for his past crimes. However, what remains unclear is whether Frank seeks revenge or redemption.

As Frank confronts Dr. Kay, he is faced with a choice: to kill her and seek vengeance for what she has done or to let go of his anger and move on with his life. This decision is symbolic of Frank’s journey throughout the film. He has been consumed by rage and a desire for revenge but now has the opportunity to break free from this cycle.

The ending can be interpreted in two ways. On one hand, Frank could choose to kill Dr. Kay, thus perpetuating the cycle of violence and revenge that has defined his life thus far. This would suggest that he is unable to escape his past and that he is ultimately doomed to repeat his mistakes.

On the other hand, Frank could choose not to kill Dr. Kay, signaling a desire for redemption and a chance at a fresh start. By letting go of his anger and choosing forgiveness over revenge, he would be breaking free from the chains that have bound him for so long.

The film intentionally leaves this decision up to interpretation, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions about Frank’s character arc. It poses thought-provoking questions about the nature of revenge and whether it truly brings closure or only perpetuates more pain.

Furthermore, “The Assignment” also explores themes of identity and self-acceptance. Throughout the film, Frank struggles with his new body and the implications it has on his sense of self. The ending, therefore, can also be seen as a moment of self-discovery and acceptance.

By choosing not to kill Dr. Kay, Frank may be embracing his new identity and finding peace within himself. This interpretation suggests that the film is ultimately about personal growth and the ability to move forward despite past trauma.

In conclusion, “The Assignment” ending leaves viewers with a lot to ponder. It presents a choice between revenge and redemption, forcing us to question our own beliefs about justice and closure. Additionally, it explores themes of identity and self-acceptance, adding depth to the overall narrative.

Ultimately, the ending is open-ended, allowing for multiple interpretations. It is up to each viewer to decide what they believe Frank’s final decision signifies. Regardless of how one chooses to interpret it, “The Assignment” is a thought-provoking film that sparks conversations about revenge, identity, and personal growth.

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• ‘Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point’ Review: Tyler Taormina’s Magical, Freewheeling Indie Captures The Holiday Spirit – Cannes Film Festival

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It begins in a car ferrying members of the Balsano family — mother and father, brother and sister — to the home of the family’s matriarch, where four generations of Balsanos have gathered for their annual get-together. This is about as much of a set-up as you’re going to get, since, once we’re through the door we’re on our own, trying to figure out who’s who in the riotous assembly of cousins, aunts and uncles. That the Balsanos are an Italian American clan is significant, but only in terms of their closeness; though there are suggestions of black sheep in their midst (like the cousin who sports a bruised cheek throughout), this will not turn out like The Sopranos’ Christmas Vacation .

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Instead, Taormina asks us to reconnect with the true meaning of Christmas, which, for the younger members of the family, is a tedious celebration of consumerism to be fled at the earliest opportunity. But for the elders, it is, literally, a feast, and Taormina’s camera lingers long on the never-ending turkey dinner that fills the longest dining-room table since The Last Supper. Taormina starts with the grown-ups first, exploring the curious glue that bonds people who otherwise have nothing in common. Primarily, he reveals that grandma, whose house it is, has become too frail to live unassisted, and her son is selling it. No one knows it yet, but tonight is a full stop in that respect.

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Slowly, the dynamic of the group starts to change; after dinner, while the adults are distracted, the teens start to peel off and head out, to the bagel shop (perhaps a little reference to Taormina’s 2019 feature Ham on Rye ), whose owner is fighting a losing battle against the “freegans” that rummage through her bins. Here, Christmas Eve becomes something more magical and impressionistic, a luminous moment where time seems to stand still. Like the adults, the teenagers have their archetypes, and, before long, they start to pair off in surprising permutations.

It’s hard to categorise Taormina’s film, and, for some, its freewheeling, indie American Graffiti vibe might take a little getting used to. Similarly, the presence of producer Michael Cera as a cop is a bit of a misdirect for anyone expecting a straight-up comedy (although his deadpan scenes with Gregg Turkington are funny and absurd). But Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is a trip for anyone willing to roll with it, and more than cements Taormina as a talent to watch. Directors’ Fortnight is the perfect place for it.

Title:  Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point Festival:  Cannes (Directors’ Fortnight) Director-screenwriter:  Tyler Taormina Cast:  Matilda Fleming, Michael Cera, Chris Lazzaro, Elsie Fisher, Gregg Turkington Sales agent: Magnify Running time:  1 hr 46 min

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‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Review: Crowded House

A reboot of the 2008 home invasion film “The Strangers” brings back masked assailants and brutal violence but leaves originality behind.

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By Erik Piepenburg

The key to a terrific scary home invasion horror movie is not just how domesticity gets breached but why. It’s great to have a determined aggressor, sympathetic victims and a brutal invasion that’s contained and sustained. But to what end?

Yet some of the best home invasion films — “Funny Games,” “Them” — don’t supply easy answers. “The Strangers,” Bryan Bertino’s terrifying 2008 thriller starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple under siege, didn’t either. It kept the invaders’ motives and their identities mysterious, amping up the devil-you-don’t-know terrors with a sense of randomness that was despairing. The premise and execution were simple. The payoff was a gut punch.

On its face, “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” the first of three new films in a “Strangers” reboot from the director Renny Harlin (“ A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master ”), checks all the same boxes. But the hapless script — written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland and based on the original — offers nothing fresh in a tiring 91 minutes, and nothing daring to justify a new “Strangers” film, let alone a new series, especially when Bertino’s formidable film is streaming on Max .

This new tale begins with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and her boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), taking a fifth anniversary road trip through the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in a rural Oregon town, they meet a seen-it-before who’s who of horror movie yokeldom: unsmiling boys, sweaty bumpkin mechanics, a diner waitress whose eyes scream “run, if you know what’s good.”

As Maya and Ryan wait for their car to be fixed, they decide to spend the night at a secluded rental cabin. Under darkness there’s a knock at the door and, true to the home invasion formula, our leading sweethearts get terrorized until dawn inside the cabin and through the woods by a trio of assailants with big weapons and indefinite end goals. They have face coverings too, making menace out of the same blank-faced creepiness the villains embodied in the original film and its 2018 sequel.

Harlin is known for action films, including “Die Hard 2,” and those chops come in handy here, especially when he’s left hanging by a sleepy middle section of frantic chases and failed attacks that feel like padding. Cat-and-mouse games can be compelling, but here , like a “Tom and Jerry” marathon, they get repetitive, dulling the impact of the violence. Petsch and Gutierrez have sufficient enough rapport, and border on sharing a couple’s chemistry as the final stretch comes to a too-predictable conclusion.

The film’s few thrilling moments have little to do with blood and guts and more with the juxtaposition of dread and song, as when Joanna Newsom’s lilting hymn “Sprout and the Bean” and Twisted Sister’s power anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” pop up unexpectedly to disorient the action. These and other oddball musical interludes provide too-fleeting hints of what might have been had this film sought a novel household takeover, not the same old.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Rated R for heaps of ruthless violence and general despair. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters.

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The stars came out in force on the red carpet prior to the movie’s grand unveiling. Lanthimos was flanked by Stone, his Oscar-winning “Poor Things” star, along with Dafoe (another “Poor Things” alum), Plemons, Alwyn, Chau, Mamoudou Athie and Qualley. Along with the cast, the celebrity-heavy audience included Demi Moore, “Challengers” breakout Mike Faist, Eva Green and Chloe Fineman.

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