When I firast watched this film,I enjoyed it thoroughly. Ironically enough in the advent of John Woo (his american popularity and his imitators) as well as Micheal Bay, Tony Scott, and Jerry Brukhiemer, it is rephreshing to see an action movie, a shoot-out action movie, where the emphasis is on efficiency and control rather than chaos. Unlike the John Woo pilosophy of keeping the guns firing non stop even if they hit nothing, Assassins works on the exact opposite theory of every shot has a purpose and a meaning and no shot is taken wildly even to distract (add on to the fact that in most John Woo movies, and especially Michael Bay movies, the guns are super loud, whereas in Assassins, pretty much every shot thats fired is silenced). I beleive there is only one instance in the film where shots are fired wildly wnd wrecklessly, and that is during the apartment scene where Antonio Banderas' character. Micheal Bein, shoots blindly through a wall at Slyvester Stallone's character, Robert Rath. Other than that, there is not really anytype of panic fire or wild bullet spraying (in fact I dont beleive this film even features automatic rifles of any kind). Strangely enough, this allows for events that move extremly quick: example, the first scene featuring the three title characters in the hotel. We see Antonio Banderas, in the blink of an eye alomst, take out 3 guards, walkinto the room they were guarding and then take out the 4 targets in that room in the same amount of time. In a way, it is very similar to the old Samurai films since their action scenes moved in a similar manner with nothingn then all of a sudden a few quick sword strikes and the conflict is over. That being said, this movie would require a certain type of taste in action movies or is a type of movie you have to be "in the mood" to watch.
sidenote: When I first watched this film, I had no idea it featured the would be superstar Antonio Banderas, nor that it was written by the soon to be Matrix creators. In that sense it is almost a fun movie to watch because it kinda answers the question "what did they do before they were famous?" and now you know.
