The Assignment

Though the constituent elements radiate potential, Walter Hill unfortunately got lost in several time planes and narrators within his own plot and screenplay. Nor is the whole film helped by the effort to incorporate a comic-book framework, which, unlike the director's version of the cult film Warriors, does not work here at all and only creates another unintentionally alienating element. He properly got to the action in only one scene, which serves as a reminder that Hill was once the successor of Sam Peckinpah. Paradoxically, the plot could work in the space of a miniseries, where the characters and ambitious themes at the core of this film about gender and sex would get more space and could be accompanied by more action passages. Crowded into the runtime of a standard film, The Assignment is unfortunately a delirious and disparate mishmash of incomplete elements and an underused yet magnificent ensemble of actors. (17.05.2020)

Michelle Rodriguez plays a man, a killer, who wakes up one day as a woman. He wants to know what caused the surgery that changed him and if it is possible to reverse it. That alone is so beautifully insane that I just had to see the film. Ultimately, it's not great, but the idea is a good one. (27.03.2017)