PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
ASSASSINS is another of many "kung-fu mysteries" in which the protagonists try to solve some puzzle in between wild martial arts battles. I won't say this sort of genre-blend can't be done well, but I haven't seen an exemplar that rang my chimes so far.
An unknown party summons not one but two professional assassins to the same town to kill a particular party. This circumstance breeds hostility between Dagger Kuan (Don Wong) and Chopper Hsiung Fei (Chang Yi), since whoever succeeds in the task is the one who presumably will get paid. Though Dagger and Chopper initially contend with one another, eventually they settle down to figuring out who's pitted them against one another. They meet a number of enigmatic characters, particularly Hua (Lung Chung-erh), a kung-fu female who pursues Dagger and tries to see whether he's amenable to being tied down. Wong's Dagger character does get the lion's share of attention over Chang's Chopper, since Dagger does get a moment where he reflects on the unpleasantness of his trade.
I frankly didn't pay close attention to all the characters thrown at me, as my main attention was focused upon sussing out ASSASSINS' qualification as a metaphenomemal film. At first this chopsocky seems barely qualified, as two other killers try to knock off Dagger by hitting with wheeled carts with retractable knives. However, at the climax the two assassins, having been given various revelations by Dagger's teacher, find their way to the main villain, a white-bearded old guy (Shao Lo-Hui) who, for once, is NOT supposed to modeled after the familiar figure of Pai Mei. He unleashes the movie's biggest and most well executed stratagem: a dozen or so acrobatic fighters wielding ropes with metal claws on the ends, which they can also use to weave into a great big hero-trapping net.
Even though Dagger and Chopper are killers, they still seem like straightforward chopsocky heroes throughout the length and breadth of ASSASSINS. This is also the first movie I've seen in which Lung Chung-erh plays a somewhat villainous role, and she meets a bad end to boot.
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