Noirvember 2022 Lazy Quickie Reviews #28
This is the most 80s 90s movie I've ever seen.
It's also wonderful, and pretty cleanly my favorite Masala film I've seen so far*.
*While I'm miles upon endless miles from an expert on the genre, I've seen at least thirty or so, which feels like enough for "favorite" to nonetheless mark a meaningful designation.
To call it a noir would be a stretch beyond even my liberal definition, but it's nonetheless one of…
For me, no other contemporary film quite encapsulates the magic of “The Movies” like Assassination.
Bigger-than-life characters drawn with empathy, warmth, and dimensionality. Pulse-pounding action spectacle. Sumptuous period sets and costumes, stunningly photographed and framed. Labyrinthine plot that’s elaborate yet easy to follow. Laughs that land, but never intrude. Satisfying arcs for every major and supporting player, some tragic, some triumphant.
Absolute, unreserved scorn for imperialist oppressors and class traitors.
Doomed romance that never was, but could have been. Daring…
Tries to follow the just-charming-enough cheeseball romcom meets plagiaristic action overload formula of the first installment for about twenty minutes, barely succeeds, then inexplicably takes a hard left turn into poorly done procedural mystery/psychological thriller territory for about ninety minutes. It is very poorly equipped for this journey.
Returns to its roots with a long, ludicrous action set piece (this time stealing mostly from Arnold instead of Ong-Bak), but by that point it's hard to check back in after so…
Cashes all the (very large) outstanding checks written by the first installment and then some, bears mentioning alongside gangster classics of the Godfather/Satya/Battles Without Honor or Humility canon.
Nawazudding Siddiqui deserves international recognition he's never gonna get because getting (most) Americans to watch Indian cinema is an ven steeper climb than getting them to watch Korean cinema.
Almost as good as the first one, and the first one is a perfect movie, soooo.... pretty goddamn good.
I was not previously aware the Merry Melodies did a full-length, live action spaghetti western, but that's clearly what I just watched.
