Not only did he produce most of the Alien franchise, but he personally gave us The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Streets of Fire, Red Heat, Johnny Handsome and Trespass.
Hill’s movies had rich characters that you cared about and wanted to survive the violent shootouts and car chases that populated his films. But it was the quiet moments that best defined his work. He had a way of twisting genre conventions and subverting expectations that felt fresh and innovative.
Alas, that fiery maverick spirit seems gone. Returning with just his second feature film in 15 years, The Assignment is not the cause for celebration that long-time Hill fans likely hoped.
It’s a hot mess, much like its central character.
Prior to its release, The Assignment — which was filmed under the more interesting title, Tomboy, A Revenger’s Tale, and initially released to festivals as (Re) Assignment — garnered backlash from the LGBTQ community because it focuses on a transgendered assassin played by Michelle Rodriguez.
Having now watched the movie, BVB can report that the most offensive thing about The Assignment is not its depiction of a gay antihero, but rather the 95 minutes of precious life wasted.
There is not a single second when you remotely believe Rodriguez is really a stone-cold killer named Frank Kitchens.
That doesn’t stop Hill from trying, and believe us, someone should have stopped him before he made the insane decision to go full-frontal, giving Rodriguez a prosthetically-enhanced Dirk Diggler reveal in the shower.
It’s one of three full-frontal scenes in the film.
The next comes after Rodriguez (as male Kitchens) has been double-crossed and wakes up to discover he is now a she who looks remarkably like him, minus the patchy fake beard.
Hill tries to sell the horror of someone discovering they’re the victim of an unwanted sex change by having Rodriguez scream bloody murder – only after she discovers that her penis has left her body.
The third full-frontal reveal is the worst, despite being unintentionally hysterical and cringe-worthy: Having drowned her sorrows in a bottle of booze, Rodriguez (as female Kitchens) stands in front of a large mirror and, ahem, explores her new body for a good five to 10 seconds of creepy awkward screen time.
As bad as this sounds, and trust us, it’s really bad, we haven’t even started talking about Sigourney Weaver.
Her character, Dr. Rachel Kay, hates Frank Kitchens because he killed her brother. So she devises a plan to lure Kitchens into a trap and transform him into a hot girl because, apparently, that's high on the list of ultimate evil revenge schemes.
Dr. Kay spends the bulk of The Assignment sitting an interrogation room in a straightjacket at a hospital for the criminally insane, recounting her nefarious plan to Tony Shalhoub. Imagine if Hannibal Lecter had bored Clarice Starling to tears by focusing entirely on his recipe for fava beans instead of talking about eating people.
And poor Sigourney gets stuck with some truly terrible dialogue, such as when she explains her decision for giving Rodriguez a fresh pair of boobs by saying, “I have liberated you from the macho prison you’ve been living in.”
But that’s nothing compared to the dialogue that Rodriguez suffers through. “Tape up my swollen tits,” she growls, complaining about having to get ready as a girl to go kill a bunch of people. “Sit down to take a piss.”
Shame on you, Walter Hill. You used to be so much better than this.
The Assignment
Genre: Action
Directed by: Walter Hill
Run time: 95 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Video-on-Demand/Select theaters
The Stuff You Care About:
Hot Chicks – No.
Nudity – Gratuitous.
Gore – Gun violence.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Career choices by everyone involved.
Buy/Rent – Neither.
Released – VOD, Mar. 3; select theaters, Apr. 7.
Speaking of someone who used to be better, let’s talk about Ice-T.
In case you aren’t aware, Ice-T has joined a short list of ethnic movie vampires (Blacula, Blade, Eddie Murphy) in Bloodrunners, a new period-inspired horror film that’s neither scary nor clever.
We like Ice-T. We liked his band Body Count and thought he was great in New Jack City. But he fails miserably at making you believe he’s an immortal bloodsucker who also leads a big band in the 1930s while thwarting prohibition to sell moonshine.
You’ve seen his Geico lemonade commercial? That’s better (and funnier) than this.
Bloodrunners strives for cult classic recognition. It really tries. But the tone is so uneven that it just never finds a groove. There are moments of Tennessee Williams pathos, followed by long stretches ripped straight from Roger Corman’s much pulpier 1979 hit, The Lady in Red, but there’s precious little vampire action for the first 75 minutes, and that’s a problem.
There’s not even much nudity, despite most of the film taking place in a brothel.
Here’s the thing – if you’re going to make the equivalent of a direct-to-VHS vampire movie in 2017, you need lots of boobs and blood and some seriously solid special effects.
The big money-shot moment in Bloodrunners? Ice-T explodes into a whirling mess of CGI bats, many of which get set on fire by the hero, during the climactic battle.
Both Bloodrunners and The Assignment leave the door open for a sequel.
Now that’s an offense worthy of protest.
Bloodrunners
Genre: Horror/Drama
Directed by: Dan Lantz
Run time: 95 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Format: Blu-Ray
The Stuff You Care About:
Hot Chicks – Yes.
Nudity – Minimal.
Gore – Minimal.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Vamps.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Released – Mar. 7.
This article appears in Apr 13-20, 2017.