Movie Review – The Assignment

Michelle Rodriguez plays an assassin who undergoes an involuntary sex change operation in The Assignment, a film so repulsive it underwent multiple name changes just to hide its transploitation.
If not for Sigourney Weaver’s amusingly off-kilter performance as a demented plastic surgeon seeking revenge, I’m not sure why else anyone would want to watch Walter Hill’s long-gestating revenge project. The film pauses along its narrative to allow Weaver to explain her motive: Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez) murdered one of her associates and she took it quite personal, choosing to remove Kitchen’s man bits (yes, Rodriguez dons a prosthetic) and adding boobs instead of, you know, just killing Kitchen. Bad guys…am I right? Poor Rodriguez does the best she can, but her/his makeup is disturbingly awful. Kitchen wakes from his involuntary surgery and naturally begins freaking out. Rodriguez spends an obnoxious chunk of the film running around town in an open robe, but she eventually reunites with an old girlfriend, who is curiously level headed about her lover’s sudden sex change. Kitchen confides in her but she has ulterior motives of her own. Kitchen must now watch his back and hunt down the doctor.
The Assignment is so over-the-top ridiculous, one must wonder if Hollywood truly is running out of ideas, except this idea has been simmering in Hill’s mind for over 40 years. This movie takes an identity and life saving surgical procedure and flips into a sort of punishment. Perhaps this is just Hill poking fun at the revenge genre, but if I were you, I’d simply avoid it.