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| DOUBLE INTRIGUE |
Alright,
enough goofy action comedies about twin brothers separated at birth, weight
lifting, JVCD splits and taking bubble baths together. This time we’re visiting
a film featuring real life spy stuff and espionage, “The Assignment“. I
first heard about this flick back around ‘99 when I was staying up late to
watch “skin-emax”, and instead stumbled upon this. Oh how those were the days…
All aboard! The Action Movie Time Machine is now departing.
The year
is 1997. Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear during a boxing match. The
world mourns the loss of both Princess Diana, Mother Teresa & Notorious
B.I.G.. The “Titanic” sails again, this time at the box office and “Batman
& Robin” proved to be the worst Batman film of all time. All this and
“Carlos the Jackal” was brought to justice in “The Assignment”,
THE
SKINNY
“The
Assignment” begins with Lt. Cmdr. Annibal Ramirez, Aidan Quinn, who is
spending his shore leave traversing the narrow streets of Israel when he
notices that he is being followed. He ditches his things and makes a break for
it, but as it turns out, the person following him isn’t the only one. There is
a group of people working together to track and capture him. Once he is
captured, he is brought to a dank and dirty apartment where he is beaten and
interrogated by an unnamed man, Ben Kingsley, who keeps calling him
Carlos and “The Jackal”.
At first
Annibal pretends to be a tourist, as are his military instructions if he were
to ever be detained in a hostile environment, but after a while he understands
that he has been captured by some form of Israeli military and starts to
explain who he is and how they can contact a naval liaison to corroborate his
story. He is detained for several more days before he is set free.
Weeks
later Annibal returns home from a long stint at sea when he is visited by Jack
Shaw, Donald Sutherland, from the CIA. Jack has come to recruit Annibal
for some highly sensitive spy work. Why Annibal? After all there must be scores
of highly trained special ops types ready and willing to take on this
assignment, right? Well none of them share the face of a notorious terrorist
for hire, Carlos “The Jackal”. Somehow Annibal and Carlos are doppelgangers.
After
some convincing, Annibal travels to a remote facility in Montreal, Canada. Here
he takes on the alias Miguel, begins learning all that he can about Carlos and
receives a crash course in spying from Amos, the very same man who interrogated
Annibal in Israel. Amos and Jack have been tracking Carlos for years, but have
never been able to apprehend him. Now with “Miguel” on their side, perhaps they
can get the drop on him.
Miguel’s
training consists of memorizing the names on tombstones, counting condiments in
a refrigerator, breathing in cheap cigar smoke and eating gallons of oatmeal a
day until it gives him the shits. I don’t know about you, but it all sounds
like high tech spy stuff to me.
As a
child Carlos’s father, who he hates, smoked the cigars and now as an adult when
he smells the same cigars it drives him nuts. The same goes for the oatmeal. As
a child he and his mother were poor and there was little else to eat. This is
all an attempt to get Miguel inside the head of Carlos. He had to endure as a
child, and now as an adult he can be selfish and impose his will on others.
This sort of personality trait is the sort of thing that will make him a
believable Carlos to the people who know him best. As for the condiments and
tombstones, these are tactics used to get Miguel to be more observant of his
surroundings. To be able to piece together the whos, whats & wheres from
his environment.
There is
a scene in which Miguel’s “mock wife”, Jack, told him that she is spending the
week out of town with family and now Miguel has two minutes to casually look
around a mock kitchen and living room, and report his findings after time
expires. He drinks from the milk carton, looks in the trash and has a seat on
the couch. Miguel’s learns from this that the milk is fresh so it must have
been purchased recently. Too recently for her to have been out of town. There
was a book of matches in the trash from a bar down the street. The couch has a
cushion turned over and smells of cheap aftershave. Miguel explains that she
never left town. She also met a man at a bar and brought him home, then had sex
on the couch. After which Miguel smiles and asks Jack, “…are you fucking my
wife?”.
The
training continues with Miguel learning how to fuck from a spurned lover of
Carlos. Let it be known -- this lady is a freak. Miguel has reservations about
cheating on his wife, but ol’ Jack always knows just what to say; “Don‘t
think of it as cheating on your wife. Think of it as fucking for your flag”.
Lol I love this movie.
As the
film approaches the final act, the plan is finally explained to Miguel. Since
assassinating Carlos outright will result in retaliatory attacks from his
fellow terrorists, Miguel will pretend to be Carlos to discredit him with his
Soviet connections and in turn let them take him out. He, as Carlos, will sleep
with one of the real Carlos’ mistresses and convince her to do some banking for
him. The banking involves accepting a wire transfer from the CIA into her
account and then out of her’s and into Carlos/Miguel’s. This is something that
will get the attention of Soviet Intelligence. This combined with a public
meeting between Carlos/Miguel and Jack solidifies the counter intelligence
story that Carlos is being paid off by the CIA to share with them what he might
know about the Soviets.
You
pretty much know how this is going to end, but because I think you should give
this flick a watch, if you get a chance, I’ll try to save some juicy details
about the finale. Just know that there is a face to face fight between Carlos
& Miguel, some secret spy code words, as well as double lives are lived.
THE
VERDICT
“The
Assignment” is tame by the standards of ‘80s action movies. However its real
life esthetic has always been something that I’ve enjoyed. The way Annibal is
trained in Canada has always fascinated me. How he was pushed to his limits --
forced to remember seemingly unimportant information and taught how to
interpret it. And of course how Jack and Amos teach Annibal to react to the
smell of cheap cigars and oatmeal the same way Carlos would, but forcing him to
smell and eat it constantly.
This is
the sort of thing I imagine real life spies might have to do in order to blend
in and survive.
Released
right around the same time as “Goldeneye”, “Mission Impossible” and “The
Saint”, I was introduced to a new brand of action movie. Sure, Bond had been
around for thirty or so years but most of those films leaned more toward
traditional action fare than what I was now getting familiar with. Besides,
Bond always had fun but unrealistic gadgets and one-liners that I’ve grown to
expect and love in Bond films, but I can’t take them all together seriously.
This
films story is as entertaining as it is interesting. I was surprised to lean in
recent years that “Carlos the Jackal” is a real person who was arrested and
convicted in ‘97 for killing several French police. The Carlos from “The
Assignment” is a little more colorful, and I don’t think there was ever a plot
to discredit him by using a double. But oh well. If you’re interested, you can
learn more about the real Carlos here.
The
acting is great, and with Ben Kingsley and Donald Sutherland, how could it not
be? The special effects are mostly good but from time to time they show their
age. There are a several explosions that are super-imposed. While they do look
obvious, they also don’t look awful. It was the ‘90s after all. Even space
aliens hell-bent on blowing up the white house super-imposed their laser blasts
[“Independence Day“].
If you
are at all interested in spy/espionage thrillers then “The Assignment” is for
you. I highly recommend It.
I’m Cory Carr and this concludes our ride on the “Action Movie Time
Machine”. Until next time, “Awfully warm for this time of year."
For more
from Cory, check out his website slaughterfilm.com, where
he and his good friend Forest Taylor
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