THE ASSASSIN Trailer

I have a philosophy on assassination. Put your index finger (washed beforehand) on your lips and say “Shhh!”. Why? Every time a person says “shh”, someone in the world dies. Go ahead, try it and in a few hours you’ll hear about it on the news. Oh, not your target? Well, you’re just not trying hard enough. This is how professional assassins do things but not the professional you are going to see in this new trailer. This is the trailer for the Chinese picture, The Assassin.

The Assassin is directed by Hsiao-Hsien Hou and stars Qi Shu and Chen Chang. If you don’t know who these people are then you’ve never seen the first Transporter film or Happy Together. Go watch them. Anyway, this film is set during the Tang Dynasty period (7th century) when the assassin Nie Yinniang returns, after several years of exile, to her family. Being part of an order, she is tasked with offing tyrannical governors avoiding imperial authority. This somehow leads her to choose between sacrificing the man she loves or to break ties with her order of Assassins.

Now the main things you will will likely see in this picture are elliptical storytelling, extreme long takes and minimal camera movement, and a concentration on action at the edge of the frame. These are some noted hallmarks of Hou’s directing style. You can see long takes in the trailer, of course. They’re meant for you to take in everything you’re seeing in terms of aesthetics and narrative. It’s almost like taking deep breaths because it leaves you the time to actually observe the things around you.

Each breath allows you to notice the slanted angle of one of the early wide shots as the assassin walks off to the right side of the screen. Some could say she makes her way toward hell while the woman in white stays closer above on the left side of the screen. Her position marks her as higher authority or closer to heaven in contrast to the earlier remark about hell. As you get near the end of the trailer, you actually hear shorter breaths. Shorter breaths mean less control of the situation and that coincides with the scenes where the intensity increases.

Zhang Yimou, director of movies such as House of Flying Daggers, Hero and The Flowers of War, has really spoiled me because of his use of color. The Assassin does well with color in terms of high contrast between things in each shot. Moreover, there is a lot of variation of colors as well but it doesn’t make me go “woah” like Curse of the Golden Flower or Hero did. However, for The Assassin, a different style is used and it’s made by a different director, but it’s similar to the other movies previously mentioned in that they focus on ancient China and “ancient Chinese flying technique”. In all honesty though, while the movie is essentially decent in color use, the colors look extremely dull for many shots. Essentially, the colors don’t excite the eye or stimulate your senses like a Yimou film does.

As it goes, it’s obviously a slow paced movie. If you’re not one to sit back and take in life, you will probably fidget throughout the whole thing. Within the trailer itself, there is a lot of those review comments that tend to be annoying, claiming how awesome the film is. It should speak for itself even though I do trust NPR. So, to be honest, you might fall asleep if you’re a person who needs constant stimulation. Then again, your snob friends might be impressed if you told them you saw this movie.

The Assassin is currently on a limited release in the U.S. For members of the United Kingdom, it will be released January 22nd 2016. For the rest of the list, click here.

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