REVIEW - THE ASSASSINS

Histrionics held at arm's length. The Assassins, Zhao Lin Shan's directorial debut, tells an intricate plot profuse with (widely neglected) psychological depths in a pedestrian style that never quite untangles the web of narrative strands it unintentionally spins itself, nor makes much sense of the images it creates. Chow Yun Fat's Cao Cao is, appropriately, the focus of Zhao's attentions, as he is the focus of the story, but it was unwise to promote him to the status of lead character - this story involves many issues concerning him, of which he is the subject in none. A less convoluted film might have resulted from narrowing in on one of these issues, as the pre-title sequence suggests might indeed be the case, with the others flanking. This approach of Bin Wang's screenplay is an obvious, misguided one, and uncharacteristic of Wang, based on his previous work. It becomes difficult to care about the characters involved, and, when Zhao resorts to a melodramatic style of directing that won't be unfamiliar to fans of the martial arts genre, some sort of emotional engagement becomes most apparently necessary. It's not that Zhao is too busy fawning over the visual content of his film to notice though, as, despite collaboration with many of the top design talents in the business (Yee Chung Man on costume and make-up, Zhao Xiao Ding on cinematography), he shoots scenes in seeming disinterest to the composition of each frame, amounting to a drab aesthetic (it's not a particularly brash design to start with, but for a lesson in how to relish such a muted palette, see Takashi Miike's Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai). Performances are equally underwhelming, save for Ni Da Hong's typically sensitive portrayal of one schemer, and action choreography is unimaginative - the action scenes all come to very little and don't last for very long. Sound design is a little garish, and Shigeru Umebayashi's score is not his most original, and it needlessly accompanies many moments which could have done without any additional sentimentality.