Soul Assassin

Accomplishing what I had thought impossible, this film moves from intriguing/thriller-worthy premise to absolute schlock within 5 minutes of the opening credits. No story. No characters. No acting. Dubious cinematography (I guess it's just a Blue, Blue World). All this matched by an ending which establishes a new standard for 'lousy'. Given that it was a free rental....I want my money back.

As my Summary said: one of the worst movies ever made in Holland. Before I rented the movie I´ve read some bad critics about this movie, but I have never thought that it was a so, almost disguisting, movie like this. I´m a 14 years old Dutch boy, and I was shamed by seeing this movie. The crew of this movie gives outsiders the thought that we are people who love sex, drugs and bicycles only. And that´s not true!! There´s a police chase in this movie with bicycles!! How horrible. Only Dick Maas can direct this kind of scenes, not a worse debutant like Laurence Malkin. The only things that I liked were some (guest-)performances from some Dutch celebrity´s, especially Georgina Verbaan as a newsreporter.

"Soul Assassin" tries to cover up the absence of substance and bucks with hyperkinetics and effects; nice try but no cigar. Shallow, transparent, contrived, and just plain stupid. Let's hope Malkin gets a real job. Pass. (D-)

In Rotterdam, when Kevin Burke (Skeet Ulrich) is promoted to chief of security of a multinational investment bank, he goes to a hotel with his girlfriend, the executive of the bank Rosalind Bremmond (Katherine Lang), to celebrate and propose her to marry him. However, Rosalind is murdered in the room, and blind of rage, Kevin looks for revenge following the guidance of his chief and mentor Karl Jorgensen (Derek de Lint).

"Soul Assassin" is a horrible movie, indeed a festival of clichés. The story is totally unbelievable and amazingly ridiculous; the characters are not well-developed and the viewer does not know who they are and their motives; the camera seems to be shooting a MTV video-clip; the choreography of the fights is awful, with many closes and cuts. I have seen few Dutch movies, but this one is certainly the worst. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Alma Assassina" ("Assassin Soul")

Beyond an absolutely brilliant performance by Skeet Ulrich as a man trained to be a hit-man for a criminal corporation, there's not much to recommend this film. It's not as terrible as some reviewers remarked - beneath the flashy visuals lies a rather old-fashioned suspense thriller. Unfortunately, the producers were clearly shopping for another "Bourne Identity", and the director, probably a meth-addict, had watched too many John Woo films. I mention this because while I watched the bicycle chase stunts - all too clearly created by the editor rather than the stunt crew - I thought of Jackie Chan's marvelous bike chase in "Project A" and thought to myself, 'gee, that's what this movie needs - Jackie Chan, not John Woo'. But John Woo is the influence here, and since Woo is an arch-stylist, to imitate him you have to have a real schmaltzy but original plot going on beneath the style; and while this film has the schmaltz, it has no originality to speak of. There are glaring references to Hitchcock and Stanley Donen, Samuel Fuller's "Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street" and an obscure thriller based on an Alistair MacLean novel, "Puppet on a Chain" - glaring because the originals were so much better and certainly don't need this sort of 'tribute'.

I won't say this is a bad thriller; some will find it entertaining enough. But it pretends to be so much more - what a disappointment.