Assassins is a
1995The year 1995 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* March 22 - The Dogme 95 movement is officially announced in Paris by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg....
action filmAction movies are a film genre wherein the story is largely told through physical action as opposed to dialogue. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero. While action has long been an element of films, the "Action film" as a genre of its own began to develop in the...
written by the Wachowski brothers and
Brian HelgelandBrian Thomas Helgeland is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter, film producer and director.-Biography:Helgeland was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Karin, is from Norway and his father from Brooklyn, New York. His surname Helgeland is Norwegian, named after a landscape in...
, directed by
Richard DonnerRichard Donner is an American film director, film producer, and comic book writer. The production company The Donners' Company is owned by Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner. After directing the horror film The Omen Donner became famous for the hailed creation of the first modern...
, and starring
Sylvester StalloneSylvester Gardenzio Stallone , nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism...
,
Antonio BanderasJosé Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor and singer. He began his acting career at age 19 with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood films including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire,...
and
Julianne MooreJulianne Moore is an American actress.She began her acting career in 1983 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the soap opera, As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988...
.
Robert Rath (
StalloneSylvester Gardenzio Stallone , nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism...
) is a paid assassin who wants nothing more than to get out of 'the business', haunted by the memory of murdering his own mentor Nicolai years ago. Rath is a quiet, morose professional who is on an assignment to kill someone when someone else gets to the 'mark' (the target) before he does.
Assassins is a
1995The year 1995 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* March 22 - The Dogme 95 movement is officially announced in Paris by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg....
action filmAction movies are a film genre wherein the story is largely told through physical action as opposed to dialogue. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero. While action has long been an element of films, the "Action film" as a genre of its own began to develop in the...
written by the Wachowski brothers and
Brian HelgelandBrian Thomas Helgeland is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter, film producer and director.-Biography:Helgeland was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Karin, is from Norway and his father from Brooklyn, New York. His surname Helgeland is Norwegian, named after a landscape in...
, directed by
Richard DonnerRichard Donner is an American film director, film producer, and comic book writer. The production company The Donners' Company is owned by Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner. After directing the horror film The Omen Donner became famous for the hailed creation of the first modern...
, and starring
Sylvester StalloneSylvester Gardenzio Stallone , nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism...
,
Antonio BanderasJosé Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor and singer. He began his acting career at age 19 with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood films including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire,...
and
Julianne MooreJulianne Moore is an American actress.She began her acting career in 1983 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the soap opera, As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988...
.
Plot details
Robert Rath (
StalloneSylvester Gardenzio Stallone , nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism...
) is a paid assassin who wants nothing more than to get out of 'the business', haunted by the memory of murdering his own mentor Nicolai years ago. Rath is a quiet, morose professional who is on an assignment to kill someone when someone else gets to the 'mark' (the target) before he does. That person turns out to be Miguel Bain (
BanderasJosé Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor and singer. He began his acting career at age 19 with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood films including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire,...
), a fellow assassin and a competitive psychopath. Rath then has the trouble of trying to figure out who sent Bain, the contractor offers him one last job that could financially allow him to retire - killing the four Dutch buyers and the computer hacker named Electra (
MooreJulianne Moore is an American actress.She began her acting career in 1983 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the soap opera, As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988...
) and retrieve a disk that contains sensitive information. Electra has set up cameras in all the rooms of the apartment block were she lives and watches them like watching television.
The problem is that Bain is assigned to kill Electra as well. Bain kills the four Dutch buyers which turn out to be Interpol agents and Rath comes to kill Electra but for first time has a change of heart. His
pay for the job is given to him in a briefcase in exchange for the disk. The briefcase actually contains a bomb placed by his own contractor in an attempt to kill him. Luckily Electra had swapped the disk not sure if Rath was coming back or not then the contractor hires Bain to terminate him. Now having become a target along with Electra he must try and extract enough money out of his contractor so he can disappear for good, while avoiding the bloodthirsty Bain. Rath's contractor turns out to be none other than Nicolai himself and that he hired both Rath and Bain to track down Electra and the disk.
Production details
The original spec screenplay was written by Larry and Andy Wachowski and sold for a million dollars to producer
Joel SilverJoel Silver is an American Hollywood film producer, director and co-inventor of the sport of Ultimate.-Biography:Silver grew up in South Orange, New Jersey. He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey and Northfield Mount Hermon School, where he is credited with inventing the sport...
around the same time he bought their script for
The MatrixThe Matrix is a science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
, also for a million dollars. The script was similar to the final product, but with a more developed love story between Rath and Electra and a briefer ending without the character of Nikolai.
Joel SilverJoel Silver is an American Hollywood film producer, director and co-inventor of the sport of Ultimate.-Biography:Silver grew up in South Orange, New Jersey. He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey and Northfield Mount Hermon School, where he is credited with inventing the sport...
offered
Richard DonnerRichard Donner is an American film director, film producer, and comic book writer. The production company The Donners' Company is owned by Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner. After directing the horror film The Omen Donner became famous for the hailed creation of the first modern...
$10 million to direct, but Donner insisted the script be rewritten to tone down the violence and make the central character more sympathetic and brought in
Brian HelgelandBrian Thomas Helgeland is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter, film producer and director.-Biography:Helgeland was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Karin, is from Norway and his father from Brooklyn, New York. His surname Helgeland is Norwegian, named after a landscape in...
, who did a page-one rewrite and earned a co-screenwriter credit. The Wachowskis attempted to remove their name from the film but were refused by the
Writers Guild of AmericaThe Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers around New York City....
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/interviews/27.html. Later, after watching
BoundBound is a 1996 neo-noir crime thriller film directed by the Wachowski Brothers. It is about a woman who longs to escape her relationship with her mafioso boyfriend...
, Joel Silver apologized to the brothers over
Assassins and offered them the chance to direct their script
The MatrixThe Matrix is a science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
.
Sean ConnerySir Thomas Sean Connery , best known as Sean Connery, is an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award winning Scottish actor and producer....
,
Michael DouglasMichael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. Douglas's first television exposure was that of Karl Malden's young college-educated partner, Insp. Steve Keller, in the 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco, a role he played from 1972 to 1976...
and
Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian American bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of the state of California....
were all considered for the part of Robert Rath.
Christian SlaterChristian Michael Leonard Slater is an American actor who has starred in films such as Heathers, Kuffs, True Romance, He Was a Quiet Man, Broken Arrow, The Legend of Billie Jean and Pump Up The Volume....
and
Tom CruiseThomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known by his screen name of Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards...
were offered the part of Miguel Bain.
The movie was shot entirely in the Seattle-Tacoma-Everett metropolitan area (the
Puget Sound regionThe Puget Sound region is an inland area of the Pacific Northwest in Washington , including Puget Sound, the Puget Sound lowlands, and the surrounding region roughly west of the Columbia Basin and east of the Olympic Mountains.- History :...
) of Washington State except the ending scenes in which the movie is shot in
Puerto RicoPuerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is a self-governing unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of the Virgin Islands...
. It features a Dia de los Muertos (
Day of the DeadThe Day of the Dead is a holiday celebrated in Mexico and by Latin Americans living in the United States and Canada. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died...
) procession crossing the streets of San Juan. This procession is mainly a
MexicanThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
tradition and is not celebrated in Puerto Rico. The movie also featured several local actors, such as
Axel AndersonAxel Anderson is a German-born Puerto Rican actor.-Early life:Anderson was born Axel Levy to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. In 1936 Anderson's family escaped the Holocaust by emigrating to Paraguay. Due to political instability in Paraguay, Anderson's family soon moved to Argentina...
and
Juan Manuel LebronJuan Manuel Lebron is a well known Puerto Rican actor, model, screenwriter, television producer and salsa singer.-Career:...
playing bit parts.
The
Banco de Puerto Rico building featured in the movie is actually a historic casino which was previously featured in the film
La Gran Fiesta.
A few years after the release,
Richard DonnerRichard Donner is an American film director, film producer, and comic book writer. The production company The Donners' Company is owned by Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner. After directing the horror film The Omen Donner became famous for the hailed creation of the first modern...
admitted that if he had to make the film again, he would've stuck closer to the Wachowski's original script and swapped the main leads, so that Stallone would be the reckless killer and Banderas would star as the experienced pro.
Box office
The film grossed $30.3 Million in the U.S. box offices alone and box office in 163 457 000.
Cast
- Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism...
... Robert Rath
- Antonio Banderas
José Antonio Domínguez Banderas , better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor and singer. He began his acting career at age 19 with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood films including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire,...
... Miguel Bain
- Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress.She began her acting career in 1983 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the soap opera, As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1988...
... Electra
- Anatoli Davydov ... Nicolai Tashlinkov
- Muse Watson
Muse Watson is an American actor.Watson was born in Alexandria, Louisiana. He attended Louisiana Tech on a music stipend for two years before transferring to Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where he performed for the first time on stage as Petruchio in a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of...
... Ketcham
- Steve Kahan
Steve Kahan is an American character actor who has appeared many films, his best known film role is in the Lethal Weapon film franchise as Capt. Ed Murphy. Kahan's cousin is director Richard Donner, who has cast Kahan in many of his films...
... Alan Branch
- Kai Wulff ... Remy
- Mark Coates ... Jereme Kyle
- Kelly Rowan
Kelly Rowan is a Canadian television and film actress and former fashion model. She is best known for portraying Kirsten Cohen on the Fox TV series The O.C.-Personal life:...
... Jennifer
External links