Asher

Something like a Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese bookie with the hip coolness of a Jean-pierre melville noir.

It was good to see such great performances from Ron Perlman and Famke Janssen, but Richard Dreyfuss was about as convincing as his fake accent. The directing was right on point, as was the score. But the writing from amateur Jay Zaretsky is what killed this film. This was only his 2nd (first being a short) writing attempt, and although the story premise in itself was decent, the screenplay was terrible. This film needed a seasoned screenwriter to edit/cut out and speed up the overly slow paced and too long 117 min length down to 80-90 mins, as well as fix some of the poor dialogue. Had this film been played at 1.2x faster speed, it may have held my attention better. The entire last 15-20 mins only needed to be 5 min. Great to see Ron Perlman back on the big screen, need to see more of him in these type of roles, and hopefully we will. It's a 7/10 from me - would have been 8 or 9/10 had the screenplay been edited down and tighter.

Aging Hitman Asher (Ron Perlman) usually works alone, but agrees to a team hit that goes wrong and this marks him for elimination. We never find out who the new group is, but Asher's handler Avi (Richard Dreyfuss) makes a deal with them and to terminate Asher. Now Asher has to protect his love interest Sophie (Framke Jansssen) because that new group is also targeting her. Oh, oh!

Well, he's not Jason Bourne, Agent 47,or John Wick, but he's good and new on the scene and I am sure we will see more Asher movies.

This was more than pretty good. Very enjoyable and we see that Asher has his finger on every pulse and can be trusted to perform. He did have a blackout early on when he was about to off someone in an apartment, but Sophie opened her door as he lay on the floor. And yes, he did come back to finish that muffed job. So now you know how he met Sophie and it is here he ends up breaking one of his rules to not get involved with anyone. (You love it when a hitman breaks his rules, right?) So true.

Notables: Jacqueline Bisset as Dora, Sophie's mother who has dementia; Peter Facinelli as Uzi, a hitman that Asher trained back in the day and is now taking jobs away from Asher; Marta Milans as Marina, who helps Asher with a hit from time to time; Blake Periman as Hannah, Uzi's wife; Ned Eisenberg as Abram, the dry cleaner who gives Asher the envelope for the next hit.

The acting all around is first rate and I am sure we will see more Asher movies unless a noise in the last scene that Asher heard laying in bed next to Sophie was not a deer in the woods. Hmmmmmm..... HA! (7/10)

Violence; Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Humor: No. Language: One F-bomb by Sophie. Rating: B

The review that said, "If the writing was better, it would have been a hit." That sums it up. Everything else about this was very good - sound, scenery, physical acting. It's all there, but it isn't

I enjoy Ron Perlmans acting, and everyone else did a pretty solid job as well. Predictable in some parts but I enjoyed it for the most part.

Are you ever really out???

6.2