Review: Assassin (2023)

Soldier Nomzamo Mbatha confronts Bruce Willis over her husband Mustafa Shakir’s current comatose state. Shakir is a drone pilot in the military, with Willis his superior. It turns out ‘drone pilot’ means something different here, as Shakir was part of a top-secret experiment using human bodies as drones. Basically, the mind of one soldier being able to be transported into the body of another. Now the technology has fallen into the hands of bad guy Dominic Purcell, and Mbatha will have to enter a drone body herself to flush him out and kill him. Barry Jay Minoff plays Marko, one of Willis’ not very nice associates.

 

If this 2023 film is as reported to be Bruce Willis’ final film, then he hasn’t gone out on the worst of notes I suppose. That’s about as charitable as I can be here, I’m afraid. If you’re still on the Bruce Willis train at this point, you should know what you’re getting here, it’s neither the best nor the worst of the direct-to-DVD/streaming era but not really worth seeking out, either. Directed by Jesse Atlas (a debutant) and written by Atlas and Aaron Wolfe (whose background is in shorts), this sci-fi outing isn’t boring but it’s too disjointed and repetitive to really work.

 

The plot is certainly a bit different from the other latter-day Willis films, and whilst not overly coherent or well-told there’s a bit more going on here than in say “Reprisal” or the “Fortress” films. The idea of using human bodies as drones isn’t an uninteresting or useless one. It deserves a better film, but still makes this one less crap than it could’ve been. There’s a creepily insincere performance by Barry Jay Minoff to its credit, and Willis has been worse and been in worse. Even before his health issues, just look at “Bonfire of the Vanities”, “North”, and “Colour of Night”, three of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Willis’ line readings are a bit flat, but at least he doesn’t look visibly confused, and directors were getting better at working around his severe limitations at this point. You can tell his dialogue has been cut to shreds from whatever was in the original script. Dominic Purcell continues to fall hard from “Prison Break”, and there’s some weird shit going on with his voice here. In addition to not being able to hold a convincing and consistent American accent (nothing new, despite decades spent working over there), it also sounds like someone else has done some of his ADR work. Someone with a booming Kevin Grevioux voice. It’s bizarre, even Steven Seagal has better ‘soundalike’ ADR.

 

Bruce Willis’ final film is a million miles from good, but I managed to find things about it to keep me awake and I’ll be a bit generous with the rating since it’s his last film most likely. You’ve had a pretty good run, Bruce. Some very big misses, but also some really big hits and you’ve obviously done the best you can to provide for your family in recent times. I have nothing but respect, and many of us will see you annually at Christmas time watching “Die Hard”.  

 

Rating: C