The Assailant
2002; directed by Tony Leung Hung-Wah

Thanks to the wonders of Netflix and video on demand services, your friendly neighborhood reviewer has been watching more than his fair share of, shall we say, less than stellar films lately, so it takes a lot for something to really stand out from the crowd, or perhaps more appropriately, below it. We have such an entry here with 2002's The Assailant: a made-for-TV, shot-on-video, and ultra-low-budget cinematic dirty bomb of the lowest order.

The generic cover art and plot -- Ken Wong plays an assassin who becomes friends with his target, Wayne Lai -- didn't inspire much confidence in me. But I thought that since the movie was directed by Tony Leung Siu-Hung, we might at least get some decent shootouts, as the guy has shown himself to be able to create solid setpieces without too much at his disposal. Well, that might have been the case here, if not for the fact that The Assailant was actually directed by yet another Tony Leung in the Hong Kong entertainment world, Tony Leung Hung-Wah. Whoops. Guess I shouldn't be choosing movies to download after having three Icehouses.

Leung Hung-Wah has dabbled in most aspects of the Hong Kong movie industry, probably having his most success (relatively speaking) as a producer, where he has a couple of interesting films like Taxi Hunter under his belt. As a director, he has not fared nearly as well, with the majority of the twenty or so movies he's helmed going straight to home video. As you couldn't tell, The Assailant doesn't raise his standards at all. It's probably telling that all of his directing gigs after this entry were projects than Leung produced himself.

I mean, really, what kind of Hong Kong director can't even get an assassin movie right, or at least average, much less the total mess The Assailant ends up being? Did Leung Hung-Wah really think the best way to end this picture is a ridiculously saccharine musical number apparently written by the Taiwan chapter of Up With People? Whatever happened to good old fashioned mindless ultra-violence? I'm all for directors trying something a bit different, but if a bucketload of day-old warmed-over crap is getting thrown on-screen, it still stinks, no matter what the director's intentions were. And The Assailant absolutely, positively, undeniably reeks.

RATING: 1.5