Day of the Assassin

"Day of the Assassin" has an overall score of 4.4 on IMDB...which seems way too high! After all, the film is very cheaply made and it looks it! Even hiring some American actors who were way after their prime (Chuck Connors, Glenn Ford, Henry Silva, Richard Roundtree...who doesn't even talk in the film, as I assume they were paying him by the word) didn't help this one much...especially since Connors seemed way too old for such a macho role.

The plot involves some sunken treasure and mysterious documents from a Shah's boat and lots of different people are willing to kill to get it. And, throughout Mexico, they run about killing each other--some in completely ridiculous manners (the parasailing murders was beyond dumb).

The bottom line is that the film is pure cheese. The action bits are often poorly done, the edits seem as if they were done by a monkey, and the dialog is at times pretty awful. There really is very little to like about the film.

Day of the Assassins is one of those cheesy low-budget action films where one vehicle bumping into another results in an instant explosion, and where a wooden shack marked 'Explosives' is guaranteed to go up in a ball of flames. The hero (or anti-hero in this case) is unflappable and irresistible to women (despite his advancing years), the location is exotic, and the bad guys couldn't shoot a barn door at ten paces. Directed by the usually reliable Brian Trenchard-Smith, the movie consists of a series of incompetently staged action scenes, with the flimsiest of plots to tie them all together: a group of mercenaries vie to get their hands on a list of great importance (contents unknown).

There's a few unintentional giggles to be had watching star Chuck Connors, in his late 50s at the time, struggling to keep his breath while running around, Glenn Ford and Henry Silva pop up for an easy paycheck, Richard Roundtree is wasted as a mute killer who is pushed over the edge of a quarry, Trenchard-Smith delivers a few juicy squib effects, and the gorgeous Susana Dosamantes provides some welcome eye candy (hunky Jorge Rivero doing the same for the ladies), but for the most part this is about as gripping as your average episode of The A-Team.

It looks like a real nice luxury resort and I'm sure the inducement for being in this film was the American and Mexican stars got to stay there while shooting Day Of The Assassin.

A whole bunch of international adventure types are at this resort when an attack is made on the Shah of Iran's yacht sending it to the bottom of the bay. Reputed treasure is supposed to be there. But mysterious Greek tycoon type Glenn Ford type has hired Chuck Connors to get a list that went down with the boat.

Connors has lots of competition, some familiar faces from the spy game.

Glenn Ford is about as Greek as Barry Fitzgerald, hope his pay check cleared.

Richard Roundtree made out best, he plays a mute assassin and hence had no stupid dialog to recite.

Day Of The Assassin is a joint Mexican-American dud.

This movie was filmed at the El Presidente Hotel at Las Palmas, in Xpata-Zihuatanejo, MX. A lot of the action takes place at and around the resort. There is a fire fight from a par-sailing bad guy. (I have para-sailed on that coast over shark infested waters). In the big car chase at the end they destroy a 1971 Mustang Mach-1 by driving it over a cliff. (I had a 1973 similar Mustang so it broke my heart to see this). Bad acting but a lot of action makes for a somewhat enjoyable movie.

This film seems like it should be better than it was. I realize Chuck is the lead and he is pretty old, but what is age? Just a number! No, he is not the problem, the problem is even after watching this thing I am still not sure what was going on. This is mainly due to the fact that so many of the leads in this film are brown haired guys wearing similar leisure suits so I am like, "Is that guy good?" or "I thought he was working with Connors and now he is burning him!" to "I thought that guy burned Connors..."

The story, um, not going to lie, I have no idea what was going on here. All I know is that it boils down to Glen Ford hiring Chuck to retrieve some piece of paper that is worth two million dollars. Meanwhile, a bunch of guys get killed on a boat then a guy parasailing drops bombs on the killers, Shaft does not speak a line of dialog and it is unclear where he stands until the end, but at least you can tell him and Chuck apart from the myriad of dudes with brown hair!

I kind of liked Connors in this, and then that dude that he referred to as Macho man was good too as I was finally able to differentiate the characters by the end. I just thought the film could have used a bit more action than just running and slow car chases.

So, not great at all, but enjoyable in its way. Could have used some more action, maybe some nudity, but that being said what does one expect from a Italian, Mexican, Spanish and possibly American co production? Most of the time a film like this is going to be bad, but fun to watch as while I could not tell what was going on as they did not a good job of storytelling, at least I got to see a man shoot a flare to end the film!