The Assignment

Hill, working with co-writer Denis Hamill, is going through the motions as far as the main revenge storyline is concerned.

Has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn't quite live up (or down, depending on your perspective) to its borderline sleazy premise.

"The Assignment" is an embarrassment all around, a murky, regrettable piece of gutter cinema. Next year's Razzie Awards race starts here.

The Assignment isn't quite as nutso and passionate as it ought to be. Even the violence, gritty at times, feels a little impersonal and detached. But the film's tawdry precision is compelling by itself.

There's howlingly awful and then there's "The Assignment," a thoroughly ridiculous, numbingly slow neo-noir thriller about a low-life hit man forcibly given gender reassignment surgery by a vengeful doctor.

This is perhaps the angriest movie Hill - longtime specialist in tough-guy fare such as "The Driver," "Last Man Standing," "Red Heat" and "Bullet to the Head" - has ever made.

Stylistically, it’s one of Hill's most accomplished works of recent years, but unfortunately a lot of that gets lost in the shuffle with the execution of its narrative.

While this is an assuredly mixed bag that’s not as funny as it seems to think it is, the instantly harsh first wave of reaction is way off.

Even moving beyond its sticky politics, The Assignment is simply a lousy film.

...fraught and deeply problematic, graphically violent and irredeemably stupid. Rodriguez is fine, but the reason this film sticks with you is Weaver, who has never been meaner or funnier...