Assassin(s)

Mathieu Kassovitz has directed one of the best movies ever (La Haine) ; a movie about gangs. This time, he comes back with a film about contract killers: Assassin(s). Kassovitz has done a very good directing job, and he is a very good actor too, but the violence is so intense in this film that it becomes unendurable to watch it.

The film is about an old contract killer who teaches his job to a young boy and who wants him, eventually, to take over the business. This isn't a very entertaining movie, it‘s pretty hard to watch, it's violent, horrifying and it has a total lack of humor. It is inspired a lot by : "C'est arrivé près de chez vous " (Man Bites Dog), which was a much better film with a lot more humor. The movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either...let's just say it was good.

This movie is, at least, morally baffling. Wagner is a veteran killer, who takes his work very seriously. However, he's dying and has no one to pass on his legacy of death. He decides, therefore, that it is best to take the young Max for his apprentice.

Mathieu Kassovitz is in great shape in this film. In addition to ensuring a solid direction, he also makes one of the main characters, namely Max. Nothing to point out from negative. The actor was able to give the character a look of ingenuity and inexperience that fit well with the situation and with Wagner, a more cunning and sinister character, who was well interpreted by veteran Michell Seraut.

Forget any notion of ethics and morals. The film is very amoral and does not mind trampling our most elementary concepts of society. It tries to point out blame for the clumsiness of our society, the inherent rot of humanity, bad television entertainment and the influence of mass communication. This is something that leaves us totally out of our comfort zone, coupled with the virtual absence of female characters and ultimately a bit disconcerting.

I personally enjoyed this movie, although it is not an easy movie for everyone. There are many artistic elements here, and I particularly liked some camera angles and shooting effects. But it lacks a solid moral background that allows people to like the film more.

Some say Assassin(s) speaks of TV-violence and its effects on society. I see the film presenting television as a substitute reality. In the film, TV is constantly there with you, you can't escape it and, slowly but surely, it changes your sense of reality. The result is a numb society, lacking the capacity to feel and emphatize. That is far more frightening than just TV-violence, which, after all, just presents the means of expressing aggression. Kassovitz realises this and directs a shocking but fantastically sharp film that follows its own path of logic owing nothing to any other film. I can't remember the time I've been shaken like this by a motion picture. It's a shame there hasn't been more discussion (in Finland, anyway) about the media-cultural issues Assassin(s) brings forward.

Having read the previous comments, I must say that for me it wasn't too gloomy, too violent, too confused. I think you couldn't have been more lucid, even visionary, in 1997, considering the real-world high school rampages thereafter (1999: Columbine/USA, 2002: Ehrfurt/Germany, etc.).Another sharp insight in this film is the depiction of the different generational "characters". We have the old, heroin-addicted killer, the naive hard-working mother, the joint-smoking, lethargic twen and the cold-blooded, bored teen. Me, being a twen, found a totally new generation presented: They are not only constant TV consumers like all the other generations, nor is only one parent missing, but here we have no parents at all, and their active, martial video-gaming-experience combined with passive access to all the trivial perverseness of TV's innumerable channels, can most likely lead to a detached killer seeking real life testing of his training in the virtual world. The key scene for me is, when Max sees himself as a killer in the reflecting car-window. He then can still reflect upon the insanity of it all.

This movie was booed in Cannes. Why? Audiences were probably expecting a second La Haine. But thank god Kassovitz did not do a repeat performance. This movie is not so much social commentary as some have approached it, but more a character study of sorts. The three protagonists interaction is quite gripping, the sitcom on TV is the best ever, and the twist in the middle(!) is filmmaking at its finest. Drawbacks aplenty, the ending is obvious, for example, and a bit of cheap shot, but overall this movie is definitely not as bad as many critics thought.