Reviews Film / The Assignment 2016

Ha! Oh, Wow

The Assignment, aka Tomboy is a 2016 schlock thriller about a hired killer called Frank, who gets sold out by his boss and forced to undergo gender-reassignment surgery at the hand of an insane, vengeful plastic surgeon. Now Frank has a woman's body, and he wants revenge!

The most striking thing about this movie, besides the unfortunate premise, is the twin big name actors it manages to squander. Michelle Rodriguez plays both versions of Frank, and spends the first twenty minutes of this movie in hilariously bad man makeup, complete with a fake beard and prosthetic penis. Once she has the dramatic surgery, she spends the rest of the movie scowling and growling her dialogue, no doubt under director's orders to act "as hairy as possible". Not to be outdone in the unconvincing acting department, Sigourney Weaver puts in the worst performance of her career, playing a Hannibal-esque mad doctor. Her portions of the movie consist of her needlessly expositing at people and acting out a twelve year old's idea of a genius, complete with her making gratuitous Shakespeare and Poe references. Had the screenwriter any familiarity with Shakespeare, they'd at least have thought to have the doctor quote Twelfth Night or any of the plays that involves gender-bending.

This movie caused some offence on its release for its trivialised portrayal of gender reassignment. Frank's surgery is flawless, allows him to pass perfectly, and was seemingly completed in the space of a weekend. This isn't the first movie I've seen play with this concept, The Skin I live In being the more artsy (and no less schlocky) take on a forced sex change. And as provocative as that movie was, it had the decency to be competently made and interesting. The Assignment meanwhile manages to be both offensive and incredibly boring. Once we get to the Post surgery portion of the film and Frank eventually stops staring at his own tits, he spends the rest of the movie acting out his revenge plan. This involves walking up to his former associates and shooting them in the face one at a time. But not without describing each and every one of them in excessive, redundant detail for five minutes apiece.

And that's about all I can say about the film. Its lurid premise never really serves anything of use, falling into the background of a largely plotless mess of repetitive scenes and padded dialogue. You can practically see the disbelief and self-loathing on the actor's faces at having to present this garbage. This is the worst film I've seen this year without a doubt, and the only people I can imagine hating it more are Weaver and Rodriguez.