Badge of the Assassin

Badge of the Assassin benefits from strong performances by James Woods and Yaphet Kotto, but that shouldn't be surprising. Sadly the film reflects the 'colour blind' attitudes of the time it was made, a time when Americans were willfully trying to ignore the twin legacies of slavery and racism. We are given little (if any) insight into the minds of the revolutionaries, who are portrayed as cold blooded maniacs. Which they may or may not be...but the one dimensional characters depicted here are not satisying. There is no attempt to place their actions in context or to explain their motivation. Perhaps that's too much to expect from a TV movie, but I suspect in a decade or two this will look as anachronistic as the antics of Willie Best look to us today.