Monday, July 15, 2019

Movie review - "Assassination" (1987) *

A decent enough set up - secret service man Charles Bronson has to defend first lady Jill Ireland. You can see the opportunities for conflict - he's rough she's hoity toity, he protects her, they develop a respect... it's The Bodyguard.

Only for some reason they don't play the love story. Bronson has a romance with a female secret service agent - Asian American, so at least it's diverse. He and Ireland develop respect but that's it.

And the story is lame. The person behind the assassination attempts is... the Chief of Staff (Michael Ansara) because... he wants the president to be single. WTF?

The assassination attempts are stupid. There's all these outlandish sequences where the killers try to get Ireland via helicopter, and Bronson zips around on a motorcycle. There's uzis and explosives. None of it feels real. It's so dumb.

Bronson is ideally cast. He seems more animated and lively than other films - maybe because he's doing so many scenes opposite his then wife Ireland who was recovering from breast cancer.

Ireland is terrible - she's given too much dialogue and too much to do. I didn't mind her in other Bronson films but she's really bad here.

It was the last feature directed by Peter Hunt who did such a marvelous job on On Her Majesty's Secret Service. His work here is poor.

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