Burst shots, lapidary dialogues, hired thugs, chicks and tough guys… Joe Carnahan’s latest feature film is a eulogy to the pulp without intellectual alibis or space for postmodern meta-readings, but with a lot of muscle; throwaway cinema -closer to the precarious filmography of Roger Avary (‘Killing Zoe’, ‘Lucky Day’) than that of his direct ascendant, Quentin Tarantino-, an unapologetic exploitation of western classics such as ‘Filón de plata’ and ‘Río Bravo’ passed through the Carpenter filter.
In ‘Assassin’s Game’ there is no character at the level of Napoleon Wilson, but there is an actress, Alexis Louder, who should be considered as a serious contender to occupy the throne vacated by Pam Grier, a woman made of tempered steel who beats Frank Grillo face to face and stares at a whole Gerald Butler. What happens between the three of them is summed up in the assault on a police station in the state of Nevada, where a scammer is taking refuge, to whom the mafia has hung the “wanted” sign. A slightly subtle game of trickery and macho humor serves for Carnahan to inflate a souflé that when it explodes it does so in a glorious third act with a gunfight that would delight Walter Hill. He could ask for more, but he offers nothing but testosterone in a violent single-dose shot with a happy ending?
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