Film: The Assassin Next Door
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 102 mins
Director: Danny Lerner
Starring: Olga Kurylenko, Ninet Tayeb, Zohar Shtrauss, Liron Levo, Henry David
Genre: Action/Drama
Studio: G2/Koch
Format: DVD
Country: Israel/France/USA
The transition from supporting player to lead role can be a cumbersome manoeuvre to say the least as some actors, regardless of the talent they've displayed in smaller, better crafted parts, struggle to carry the weight of an entire feature. Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko, who has steadily received attention for a string of sexy femme fatale/love interest roles in high profile American movies, including Hitman (2007), Quantum Of Solace (2008) and Max Payne (2008), is now making the same jump with Danny Lerner's low-key, low-budget and low-brow gangster thriller, The Assassin Next Door (2009).
Kurylenko stars as Galia, a prostitute trapped under the thumb of a violent Israeli crime syndicate. After a failed escape attempt, Galia is promised money, her passport and plane tickets to return to the Ukraine and be reunited with her daughter on the condition that she becomes a killer for hire. With reluctance, Galia fulfils the request and is subsequently enlisted to murder rival criminals. She is also set up in a rundown apartment.
As Galia is strung along by the syndicate, she befriends her next door neighbour, Elinor (Ninet Tayeb) ,who comes home from working in the local grocery store only to be beaten by her sociopath husband. Their mutual desire to escape the city creates a strong bond between them, but when Galia fails to kill one of her targets, the syndicate comes after them both...
The Assassin Next Door – also known as Kirot in a number of territories – tries to create a balance between showing the grubby sleaze of the criminal underworld with quiet personal drama, and while both are technically covered, neither add up to the sum or their parts. The former is depicted in a typically clichéd and juvenile style - track-suited men standing around in grim night-clubs and bordellos, performing senseless beatings on cue, and making the same idle threats about killing loved ones and so on if what they ask is not accomplished. The latter, although executed with a lot more tact, is sluggishly paced and jumps through the usual hoops.
Those thinking that this film will be a light-hearted, hi-jinks filled action/comedy based on its title – a la Jackie Chan's The Spy Next Door – will be disappointed. On the contrary, The Assassin Next Door is somewhat of an ugly film, but not ugly in the way that the filmmakers intended. It’s clear from the start that Lerner is going for a ‘gritty’ and ‘real’ look, however, the technology, resources and budget used sabotage this. The use of mid-quality video cameras, coupled with a near complete lack of film lighting creates an image that's harsh, cheap and lacks the smooth immersive qualities that decent celluloid stock can offer. The first scenes – that see Galia and a fellow prostitute attempting to flee the gang – look especially amateurish, and has the appearance of a student film. The overbearing and utterly generic music score doesn't help in remedying this and simply exacerbates the problem.
Despite this, the camerawork isn't terrible, and seems to improve over the course of the film, reaching its zenith when a scene involving Galia approaching one of her targets in a night-club is covered in a single, moderately impressive tracking shot – from getting out of the car to busting into the target's toilet cubicle. Other indoor scenes – especially those that are brightly lit – look a lot better than, say, night-time exteriors - the latter is most likely a bi-product of the guerilla filmmaking tactics that inevitably would've been used for those scenes.
As for the performances, there's a smorgasbord of one-dimensional stereotypes on offer. Kurylenko handles the mopey assassin with a questionable past with apparent ease, and has a strong enough presence to suggest that she'll be able to lead the dance in future movies. Israeli music recording artist Tayeb is also a minor revelation, sharing surprisingly natural chemistry with Kurylenko, even though their characters communicate through frequently tedious and always broken English. Their relationship quickly becomes the focal point and, as a result, the film displays more emotional depth and intelligence than one would perhaps expect.
However, this attempt at meaning is categorically undermined by the film's technical execution. Whilst Lerner goes to great lengths to develop the central relationship, not only does it rely on worn out plot points and character arcs, it feels like other production aspects were neglected in the meantime. As a result, the pacing suffers quite badly; there's not much of the sexy-eastern-European-girl-with-gun scenario as suggested by the box art and too much of Elinor telling Galia which noodles to buy in the supermarket, among other real world life lessons. As one would expect, they both learn a little from each other: Galia learns to face up to her responsibilities, both in terms of the gang she's entangled with and her abandoned daughter, whilst Elinor develops self-respect, confronts her abusive husband and... you get the idea.
The handful of action sequences dispersed throughout also suffer from both the pacing and the production's budget. There's nothing standout about how they are orchestrated, except that, on occasion, it can look unintentionally funny – a strangely timed and awkwardly pulled punch to Kurylenko's face in one scene will likely tickle the sadist in some viewers. Things liven up a bit in time for the third act but it’s hardly compensation for the overlong and overcooked development that brings the mid-section to an oxygen starved crawl. More often than not, the action in The Assassin Next Door looks exactly what it is: a bunch of actors running around with toy guns, firing blanks and spewing tomato ketchup (this doesn't happen, but it may as well have) from fake wounds.
The title and premise of The Assassin Next Door suggested that it would be a piece of dumb, mildly exploitational fun that, at the very least, would've been an ample distraction from one's real-life woes. Instead, it offers a half-hearted and predictable personal drama set within sporadic and ill staged bursts of violence that don't come across as gritty and real but juvenile, self-conscious and a little amateurish. Lerner's heart may be in the right place, but his skill and choice of execution doesn't quite reflect that. The end product is sluggish, sloppy, derivative, quite boring and impossible to recommend. MP
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