‘The assassin’s game’: a game of cat and mouse in an extremely violent version

‘Assassin game’ ★★★

interpreters Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, Toby Huss, Ryan O’Nan, Tait Fletcher

premiere 20 May 2022

New ‘activist’ Joe Carnahan It stages an extremely violent version of a cat-and-mouse game between a hitman and a con man, and places a determined rookie cop in the middle of the two. The fact that the brutal conflict takes place almost entirely inside a Nevada town police station is one of the film’s main distinguishing touches.

But there are a few more. Carnahan makes it difficult to decide which side to be on, and we can’t always predict what will happen next; loyalties are constantly changing, which surrounds the story in an atmosphere of intense threat. Likewise, he uses the spatial geography of the police building to great effect to repeatedly surprise his characters and choreograph the colorful shooting sequences. During this period and From Sergio Leone’s films and ’13. Borrowed from siege movie classics such as ‘The Attack on the District Police Station’. (1976), the film faithfully encapsulates the aesthetic of the ‘exploitation’ cinema of the 70s.

It is true that Carnahan sometimes goes to extremes with brushstrokes—or brushstrokes. Humorand although the dialogue sometimes seems too concerned with drawing attention to its style, it nevertheless manages to let these excesses dampen the film’s inner impact.