An exciting South Korean War thriller from the director of THE THIEVES; half of the cast of that film come back too. This one's even better in my mind, with a story that's more serious and more fraught; it involves a wide group of characters attempting to assassinate some Japanese and accompanying Korean traitors during the 1930s. A long film, but fast-paced and thoroughly engrossing with it. It does hit the ground running and comes across a little confusing in the first half hour, but then the complexity irons out and we're left with a good mix of typically strong acting (hello, Lee Jung-jae and Ha Jung-woo) and excellent shoot-out set-pieces. Great stuff!

"Assassination" (aka "Amsal") is somewhat of an acquired taste. If you enjoy a historical drama, then you might actually find some enjoyment in this 2015 movie. However, for me personally, "Assassination" was just too slow paced and uneventful.

The storyline was well-written, sure. But the pacing of the storyline was just abysmal, and it took writer and director Dong-hoon Choi forever to get from A to B, and with surprisingly little of any entertainment worth happening in between. In fact, I gave up 65 minutes into the movie, then I just couldn't go on anymore. The movie was just too boring for my liking.

And it didn't really help much that the characters that were written for the storyline were so faceless and mundane. I literally didn't really care one ounce about any of the characters in the storyline, because they lacked depth, personality and story. It felt like I was just watching clones milling about on the screen, and that was something that dragged the movie down.

Now, I will say, though, that the cast ensemble was interesting and definitely good. It was just such a shame that the actors and actresses literally had nothing noteworthy to work with in terms of script, plot, story and characters.

Visually, then "Assassination" definitely was nice. But having good visuals does only so much to lift up a movie with a flaccid script and a lack of proper storyline.

I wasn't impressed with this 2015 movie, and I can honestly say that I am not going to bother returning to finish the rest of the movie, especially since it was so unfathomably slow paced. My rating of "Assassination" lands on a generous three out of ten stars. This was a swing and a miss in terms of entertaining me.

The always entertaining Gianna Jun headlines Assassination, a thrilling historic drama set during the 1930s in Japanese Occupied Korea. An OK-Yoon (Jun) is an expert marksman released from prison to execute a daring plot. Hired by Yeom Suk-Jin (Lee Jung-Jae),she is to take Soksapo (Cho Jin-Woong) and Hwang Deok-Sam (Choi Duk-Moon) to Seoul, where they will terminate Kang In-Gook (Lee Kyoung-Young),a vile Japanese sympathizer.

At the same time, Hawaii Pistol (Ha Jung-Woo) and his accomplice Younggam (Oh Dal-Su),two expert assassins who care only for profit, are hired to eliminate the assassination team, though problems arise when Hawaii Pistol confronts OK-Yoon, and finds himself torn between his mission, and a possible future with his beautiful target.

Unlike Choi-Dong Hoon's The Thieves, where audiences were left guessing which characters had nefarious agendas, the director in this instance reveals the identity of the traitor almost immediately. This however, does not come at the expense of the plot, as we watch how the villain manipulates other characters, and eventually begins to psychologically suffer from living a treacherous existence. Often during the film, audiences are privy to information that characters are denied, and though we acknowledge interconnections between characters that even they know nothing of, further details could have been provided to flesh out the heroes and antagonists alike. As an example, though clues are provided as to why OK-Yoon was given a prison-sentence, a definitive answer is never provided.

Again, unlike The Thieves, the use of humorous dialogue is kept to a minimum, accentuating the morbid tone the film primarily exhibits. The action scenes moreover are very entertaining, heightened by the settings, that are occasionally rarely seen in such a genre, the explosions and gun battles that take place dazzling the screen. At the same time though, these scenes predominately transpire later, the film being more of a war drama, than an action film.

Assassination is set over several decades, the way the multiple narratives intersect to reveal how moments shape the plot, alongside character's lives, accentuating the story. At the same time however, the stereotypical Korean melodrama does render the film predictable, poignant moments in the narrative being capitalized to gather emotive reactions from viewers, the resulting consequences being very foreseeable, which diminishes some of the film's more powerful moments.

The feature is a very typical war film, in that it represents only one side of the confrontation, in this case, the Koreans, who are portrayed as sympathetic victims. This is heightened by the villainous qualities of the antagonists, Japanese soldiers like Kawaguchi (Park Byung-Eun) being visualized as deranged murderers, whose loathsome deeds render them inhuman.

There are occasional moments of beauty to be had over the film, however, much of Assassination demonstrates the horrific violence that transpires, condemning such actions, while embracing the belief, those who can do good, should vehemently do so. Despite The Thieves being a more enjoyable film, Assassination will certainly stay with you, long after it has finished.