As punishment for botching a mission due to a moment of
weakness, a skilled female assassin is assigned to target a cousin to whom she
was once betrothed. In The Assassin, director
Hou Hsiao-hsien treats the viewer like a fishing lure, periodically and briefly
reeling them in for scenes of great tension while mostly letting them drift on a painterly sea of tedium and puzzlement. The film clearly strives to
be an arty, cerebral martial arts movie a la Crouching Tiger but is so languidly paced and limitedly plotted
that it totally loses your interest by the time it reaches the intrigue.
** out of ****
