Sylvester Stallone and His Friends' Films Podcast | Assassins - Stallone, Banderas, and 90s Action Gone Wrong

In this crossover podcast episode from the Going the Distance, Slycast, and Rocky Minute podcasts, hosts Ryan, Craig, and Doug dive into a lively and critical review of the 1995 action thriller "Assassins," directed by Richard Donner and starring Sylvester Stallone as veteran hitman Robert Rath, Antonio Banderas as his ambitious rival Miguel Bain, and Julianne Moore as the quirky hacker Electra. The discussion kicks off with their initial impressions and viewing histories, then explores the film's convoluted plot involving assassin rivalries, betrayals, and a mysterious disc, while critiquing elements like outdated 90s tech, poor character chemistry, illogical scenes, and production trivia including the Wachowskis' screenplay and Donner's direction. Filled with humor, nitpicks on realism (especially from Doug's police perspective), and comparisons to Stallone's other films, the hosts express disappointment in the movie's pacing, twists, and lack of likable characters, ultimately deeming it forgettable despite its star power and budget, before wrapping up with trivia, alternate casting ideas, and promotions for their respective shows

Creators and Guests

Host

Craig Cohen

The OG Podfather

Host

Doug Greenberg

He has Big Guns

Host

Ryan Rebalkin

What is Sylvester Stallone and His Friends' Films Podcast ?

Welcome to the *Sylvester Stallone and Friends* podcast, your go-to show for fans of Sylvester Stallone’s action-packed legacy, hosted by Ryan and a variety of other passionate hosts! This podcast dives deep into Stallone’s standalone films and those of his action-hero contemporaries, with special episodes dedicated to Frank Stallone. Please note that *Rocky* and *Rambo* are covered exclusively on our sister podcasts, *One More Round: The Rocky Series Podcast* and *It’s a Long Road: The Rambo Series Podcast*. Join us for engaging discussions, behind-the-scenes insights, and a nostalgic celebration of the films that defined a genre. Whether you’re a longtime fan or new to the scene, subscribe to the *Sylvester Stallone and Friends* feed for action-packed episodes you won’t want to miss!

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All right, well, I think we're live. Welcome to this special crossover episode. We're really excited because myself, Ryan, from the Going the Distance podcast, and Craig from the Slycast, and Doug from Rocky Minute, we're all joining together today again for our monthly Stallone movie review.
Today's vote, by almost a landslide, a pretty good margin, I think, is Assassins, the 1995 film Assassins. Guys, how do you feel about this choice that the public picked?
We still have time to talk Rhinestone. I'm prepared for Rhinestone, so if you guys want to call an audible, I'm good.
I think Ryan paid off people to vote for Assassins.
Negative. I made sure that during the polls, I never said this was mine. I don't think I did. I was pretty careful not to contaminate the polls.
Ryan, I just want to go on record early and say that I hate you.
Okay.
Because until yesterday, when I rewatched this movie, I really, really liked Assassins, which I hadn't watched in about 15 years.
That's awesome. Okay, so why don't we first talk about the first time you saw the film?
So, Craig, you already alluded to that. When's the first time you saw this film that you can remember?
I don't recall seeing this in theaters for whatever reason. I think watching it for the first time on, like, probably VHS, probably when it came out on home video.
I just, I really don't have any memory of sitting in a theater watching this one.
Doug, what about you? When's the first time you saw this that you can remember?
Oh, about 24 hours ago.
Oh!
I never saw Assassins.
That's actually cool that one of us has seen it for the first time recently for this review, because that's really going to add to the discussion.
Like you, Craig, I'm not sure if I saw this in the theaters. I probably did, because I think every theatrical Stallone movie release I have seen since 1983.
Wow.
I would assume, I'm not even joking, I would assume I saw this in the theaters, but I would say it's probably the last time I saw this, so it's been 23 years.
What does that tell you?
That it wasn't memorable the first time.
Yeah, it was so good the first time, I just wanted to hold on to that moment forever.
You're the one that picked it.
Because I think, look, I don't necessarily put this in the poll because I think it's a fantastic film.
I remember thinking it was supposed to be a smart action movie, like an intelligent type action movie.
I remember thinking there was a couple scenes at the time in 1995 that seemed kind of unique, kind of different than the standard action fare that was in the mid-90s, which weren't very good films in the mid-90s for action films.
So I don't know, I didn't walk away from the initial viewing of loathing the film, but obviously not enough that I ever bought it on DVD, I never bought it on VHS, I never saw it on cable again, so that alone should have told me what my initial experience was.
Doug, did this feel like getting in a time machine and going back to 95?
This was like the most 90s movie I can remember watching in recent memory.
I mean, it screamed 1995.
It was crazy to watch and be like, wow, this movie just really captured a year and a decade.
Yeah, I don't think a lot of 90s films especially age very well.
This is no exception.
Everything from Banderas' hair to Stallone's pleated trousers.
And just the whole Julianne Moore thing.
Julianne Moore, yeah.
Okay.
Let's first talk about who directed this film.
Dick Donner, Richard Donner.
Yeah, so Richard Donner of the Lethal Weapon fame and other action films.
And he wasn't quite out of his prime yet as a director at this time, but he directed this film.
He directed Superman, of course, the original.
Let's see what else he directed.
He directed Goonies, Lethal Weapon, Lost Boys, Scrooge, Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Free Willy, Maverick, which is actually quite a fun film.
And Maverick was this film that he directed with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster the year before and the next movie was Assassins.
He didn't direct Lost Boys.
Oh, my apologies.
Lost Boys.
Yeah, sorry.
He's a producer.
Producer, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, Joel Schumacher directed that.
Yeah.
Don't take that away from Joel Schumacher.
He needs it.
He needs whatever he can get.
Feather in his cap.
So Richard Donner, of course, directed all the Lethal Weapons.
His last movie was...
Oh, Paul Walker, Time Something.
Timeline in 2003.
By 2006, he directed a movie called 16 Blocks.
Oh, that was...
Bruce Willis.
Bruce Willis and Mos Def, yeah.
Is it Mos Def or Mos Def?
He's the Mos Def.
He's the Mos Def, yeah.
Was it Mos Def only or he's the most hard of hearing?
You are so white.
We have one Canadian rapper and his name is Drake.
Oh, yeah.
He was on...
What's that?
Degrassi.
Yeah.
Yep.
Wasn't he in a wheelchair or something like that?
Yeah, sir.
I think he was a wheelchair.
I didn't know...
Oh, he also directed Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson.
So he did a lot of Mel Gibson films.
He's like a Mel Gibson director.
So Assassins was directed by Richard Donner and produced by Joel Silver.
You saw who wrote this thing?
Yeah, it was written by...
The Wachowskis.
Yeah, the Wachowskis.
A page one rewrite by Brian Egeland, who was a pretty active guy in the 90s if you needed a script polished up.
The Wachowski sisters now?
Yeah, The Matrix.
Yep.
Yeah, The Matrix.
They're the brothers at the time of The Matrix, but they're both transgender females now.
Yeah.
I thought it was one of them.
Yeah, it was.
And then the other one, like two years later, was like, you know what?
I'm going to get on that train too.
And, you know, God love them.
They're living their life.
They are living their life.
Life choices aside, their movies have not done well lately.
Rightfully so.
They've made utter trash.
I mean, that first Matrix is sort of lightning in a bottle.
I don't have much good things to say about the other two Matrix sequels.
I never bothered seeing Speed Racer.
And that movie with Tom Hanks in prosthetics makeup, I never seen either.
Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, Speed Racer.
Now, they did kind of get some little bit of cred and respect back when they did that Sense 8 series on Netflix.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's got a big following.
Didn't they try to back out of this after the rewrite?
Yeah.
That's what I read.
Yeah.
The claim was, is that Brian, how do you say his name?
Helglin?
Helglin.
The Wachowskis stated that their script was totally rewritten by Brian and that they tried to remove their names from the film but failed to do so.
I'm sure they still took the paycheck.
It's, oh, yeah, it's weird.
So I wondered when I was watching this, did you guys try to get any kind of feeling of where the Wachowskis might have had influence in the movie itself?
All the violence.
Which I don't think is even that much.
Well, it's not gratuitous violence, but there's a lot of mayhem.
And I'd also probably say the Julianne Moore character, Elektra, is probably very much them.
Even in The Matrix, they were writing really strong, for lack of a better word, female characters.
I wouldn't really consider Elektra a strong female character in this, but she's at least well-written.
Why the name Elektra?
It's like a cyber name.
You know, that's how it works.
In 1995, man, the internet was like this big, mysterious thing that the general public didn't really understand.
We're going to get into some of that stuff as we talk about the film.
I just wanted to make sure we get who wrote this thing.
So this guy, Helgland, he wrote big pieces, though.
He wrote L.A. Confidential.
That's huge.
He wrote one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
Part four.
Yeah, The Dream Master.
Yeah, that Parker movie that Mel Gibson did, Payback.
Yeah, it's another Mel Gibson production.
He also wrote Mystic River.
Oh, wow.
Bloodwork.
Yeah, he's legit.
That's a good one.
Man on Fire.
That's a great one.
The Taken to Pelham 123.
Green Zone.
The 2010 Robin Hood.
Hold on, which one was that?
Was that the one with Russell Crowe?
Yeah.
Okay.
I lose track of those sometimes.
And of course, The Knight's Tale.
That was a great movie.
Did you guys remember that one?
Oh, yes.
It had like the rock soundtrack, but it was medieval.
Right.
Oh, I remember.
The exploding jousting sticks.
Yeah.
And he also wrote Legend with Tom Hardy.
The people behind this film.
So I want to set this up.
And the reason why I think this is important, because I think-
Well, Joel Silver produced it, right?
Yeah.
So it's a Joel Silver production directed by-
So if you saw this on a marquee, directed by Richard Donner, and this is 1995.
And so, well, actually, it doesn't even matter what the year.
I think if we saw this marquee set up at any point right now, even, if you just happen to see Richard Donner, Joel Silver production, screenplay by the Wachowskis, Brian Hedlund writing, and then starring Stallone and Banderas and Julianne Moore, you'd be like, whoa.
We may have something here.
We just may have something here.
Do we have something here?
You've got a movie that cost $50 million to make.
Yeah.
It cost $50 million to make.
This is 1995.
I don't have the adjustment in front of me.
We can work on that later.
But box office worldwide of 83.
So it made $33 million if it didn't cost any more for, what do you call it, advertising, what have you.
I was really surprised when I saw that budget number because you don't really see that on the screen, right?
No, I didn't see it anywhere on the screen.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know what Stallone was getting paid in 1995.
I mean, he wasn't getting $20 million a picture anymore.
That's for sure.
Was this the point in his career where he was, like, slipping?
Oh, we lost Doug.
And then my earphone popped out, so I couldn't hear you.
So Doug's already quit.
He's had enough.
I was wondering why he was silent.
I was like, where did Doug go?
I saw his image disappear, and I was like, oh.
This is it, folks.
This is what happens when we're live.
You know, things can happen.
So if people are actually watching live, we've got a few people watching.
This is, again, just a live recording.
It isn't the final product.
The final product will be on our podcast.
Respect the podcast.
I'm just going to tell Doug to come back, please.
We sure could use him.
Maybe his wife told him to get off the internet.
1995, $30 million.
It's a pretty healthy budget.
It's probably healthy but not too crazy because there's no CGI.
Very simple sets.
I think they probably spent more money on travel than anything else.
Yeah, yeah.
And Stallone definitely wasn't getting $20 million a picture anymore.
Where was he in his career at this point?
Well, what?
He was coming off of, was it Judge Dredd?
I think Judge Dredd was 95 as well.
And I think Specialist was 94.
Yeah.
Two years before, or two or three years before Copland, when he tried to redeem his career.
Yeah, he did Daylight directly after this.
Right.
And Judge Dredd directly before it.
So he was coming off of that Cliffhanger Demolition Man Specialist, 1-2-3 Punch, and then Judge Dredd, which, I mean, we haven't talked about Judge Dredd yet.
That is going to be the next Slycast discussion.
Oh, right.
Nice.
I think Judge Dredd is a marker in his career that really sort of spelled the beginning of the end.
Well, yeah, if you go in order here, he did Stop Her, My Mom Will Shoot, which was a complete disaster.
And that's probably going to be one we're going to throw in the poll for one of these.
But then 93 was Cliffhanger, which was considered a great film, of course.
I would say that's probably the peak of his earning power.
Yeah.
And then I think there was a pretty steep drop-off.
Well, Demolition Man did well.
I remember that kind of being a fun – the critics might not – it wasn't a critical darling.
Yeah.
But fans like it.
That also had a Taco Bell tie-in.
So, I mean, that was a commercial film.
And The Specialist, as we've talked about, go back and listen to that episode.
People, if you haven't already, our Specialist review speaks for itself.
And then I think it was The Specialist and Judge Dredd and Assassins.
Those three in a row really kind of started to affect his star power, I would say, a little bit.
Yeah.
The weird thing is I don't really remember a lot of the marketing for Assassins.
It almost feels like Assassins was more of, hey, we've got this young up-and-comer Antonio Banderas in our movie who had a really, really active 1995.
I don't know when the guy slept.
That's a crazy amount of filming.
Judge Dredd, Assassins, and Daylight, all with two-year period.
Sorry, The Specialist, Judge Dredd, Assassins, and Daylight, two years.
All two years, four movies.
That's a lot of work.
Look at Antonio Banderas in 1995 alone.
Miami Rhapsody, Desperado, Four Rooms, Assassins, and Never Talked to Strangers, and Too Much.
I mean, that's a lot of filming.
He was definitely going after it.
You know, he kind of hit with Desperado, I guess.
And he took the ball and ran with it.
So, Doug, we're just talking about Stallone's career at this time, that it started to kind of slip a little bit, because I remember when Copland came out in 97, it was kind of a redemption film.
And we'll talk about this as we talk about other films after Copland.
But the dip that he took after Copland was even worse than the mid-90s.
His 2000s were horrible.
Get Carter, Driven, Avenging Angelo, Detox, Shade.
He was still considered a big action star at this point, right?
Well, yeah, we were kind of thinking, Doug, that this is the point right after his peak sort of earning power.
This was the start of the beginning of the end for the box office powerhouse that was Sylvester Stallone.
What was the next project he did after this?
Daylight.
Daylight was after this.
And Judge Dredd was right before it.
Right, okay.
Yeah, I would have to agree then.
And then Copland was supposed to be his rebound, and it wasn't.
And then the rebound that he missed, the 2000s were.
I got to tell you this.
It's amazing that we're actually talking about Sylvester Stallone in 2018 because he survived that straight-to-DVD purgatory, thankfully.
Because I'm not sure that we'd be talking about him right now if he didn't make it out of that early 2000s.
If he wasn't able to make Rocky Balboa.
I'm just looking through his 2000s stuff.
You know, you guys thought it was funny that I never saw this.
But I saw Get Carter.
All I saw up until Rocky Balboa.
So there's a lot of movies you haven't seen of his career that we'll probably cover for the first time on this show.
Probably.
Four viewers want to hear our thoughts on this movie.
What it's about.
How it goes.
So at the very beginning, we have this godfather-esque type in a marsh, some sort of marsh, where, for the record, Stallone's name for this movie is another great name.
Well, thankfully, it's not his given name we learned.
Robert Rath.
Any thoughts on the name?
It's a name.
I'm sure that's one name that the Wachowskis don't want to take credit for.
Is this his real name?
I know Robert wasn't his real name.
I forget the real name of the game at the end of the movie.
Does anyone remember?
Joseph.
Was it Joseph Rath?
I don't know.
No, actually, I think it was Joseph Balmowski making this part of the Stop Where My Mom Will Shoot universe.
Oh, wow.
That's deep, man.
Oh, easy.
You're going to lose Craig.
Oh, man.
You just made me getting up to talk this movie worth it.
So his name is Robert Rath.
We find out this is his assassin's name.
This is his calling card.
Why would you name yourself Rath?
He's the most calm, monotone person named Rath I could have ever imagined.
If you remember that when we did The Specialist, I went over his list of names for his character names from the 1990s.
And this was certainly one of the more goofy ones.
Well, what's stupid about it, among a few things, is that Rath isn't even spelled properly.
It's R-A-T-H.
So it sounds like Rath, but it's not truly Rath.
That's not a last name.
No.
It'd be like calling him Robert Killer, but there was no E in the killer.
We don't want to quite spell it.
You don't want to make it too obvious that we're saying the word Rath.
Actually, Rath is a last name, Doug.
It's got origins in German and Jewish.
Yeah.
So I guess calling me corrective.
So that's one time you're proven wrong today.
Well, his name in Spy Kids 3 was Toymaker.
Yes.
I mean, that's obvious.
So what do you guys think of this opening sequence where Robert Rath is leading out to pasture a fellow, I guess, a fellow assassin?
Yeah.
This was another one of those movie tropes that was really popular.
Probably, I don't remember when The Professional came out.
But movie assassins were a big deal for a while.
The whole idea of a professional hitman or assassin, it kind of created this sort of romanticized it.
The fact that it's two hitmen together and the guy asked for a clean kill and stuff like that.
There's no basis in reality there, right?
No, there is not.
So who was this guy to Robert Rath?
Were they co-workers?
He said something to the effect like, you know, you've killed people too or you're no better than me type.
Like you got one assassin speaking to another assassin about the moral of their job, the morality of their job.
So I guess this new assassin is now a mark for Robert Rath.
So the marks are referred to the hits that these guys are assigned to kill for whoever hires them.
So I guess Robert Rath has been given the assignment to kill another assassin.
They've known each other from their past assassin work.
What's this supposed to illustrate though?
That he's a hitman?
I know.
But he's a horrible one because he makes the guy kill himself.
Is it showing that he's like a good guy hitman because he did what the guy asked him to do?
The hitman with the heart of gold?
Yeah.
I don't understand this opening.
Okay.
Can I just say for the record, right off the bat, why is this movie so confusing?
I think you nailed it when you said, Ryan, that this was supposed to be like the smart, intelligent movie or whatever.
And I mean, I think that's the thing.
I think when your intention is to make something smart or intelligent, sometimes you outsmart yourself.
You're right, Craig.
And I think you said it best when you said it's an assassin with a heart of gold.
Because Stallone in this part of his career, he's still kind of a good guy.
For us as an audience to be able to wrap our brain around, our viewing brain, that Stallone is playing really an amoralistic character.
This guy's hired to kill people.
It's assumed or insinuated that he's killed men, women in his career.
Yeah, he's had what, a career that's over 15 years.
Right.
At least.
We see the very beginning of the film.
We see what we learn later in the film, that he was given the assignment to kill a friend who's also an assassin.
For those who haven't seen the film, the probably only way.
No, no, no, no.
My plea is for us to be able to get through this discussion.
This is a hard one to get through.
I think people are going to have to have seen the film because describing and trying to explain what's going on is insane.
I don't understand.
Ryan, you're a pro wrestling fan, right?
Yeah.
Doug, are you at all interested or a fan of pro wrestling?
I used to be.
Not so much these days.
If you watch this movie and think that they were running from the pro wrestling guide to writing handbook, the movie makes a lot more sense.
Because you've got your typical face stuff going on.
You've got your chicken shit heel.
You've got the big turn that makes no sense at the end of the movie.
When I started thinking of this as just a pro wrestling movie, it worked a lot more for me or at least made it a lot more bearable.
Very convoluted plot, though.
It's insane.
When he gets the contract to kill Elektra, there's this MacGuffin, this disc that never has any damn payoff anyway.
I'm going to do a shout out right now to Sicko, who loves the way we jump around our movies.
So, Sicko, this plot jump is for you.
Yeah.
He's always corrected me.
All right.
So, now we get to see Robert Rath in his home on a very high-tech computer.
He graduated from the tech he had in the specialist, at least.
Yeah.
So, this is like a little laptop.
Here's my phone, for example.
It's amazing the power that we have in our phones right now because we're seeing in this movie 95.
It's like a little laptop and the length of time it takes for a text message to get sent and to receive.
As we see later in the film where they send pictures via the internet, it's like dook, dook, dook, dook, dook, dook, dook.
It's really amazing you could send pictures to somebody in 1995 and to watch it in 2018.
It just does not age well.
It's Wi-Fi capabilities.
He's communicating in a car with it.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
How did he do that?
In 1995, he's like chatting on his laptop.
I didn't know we could do cell covers like that back then with laptops.
Did you get the model number, the product, the Apple PowerBook 540C?
Oh, is that what he was using?
Yeah.
Did you get the specs on that?
Yep.
Apple Macintosh PowerBook 540C features a 33 megahertz something processor, 4 megabyte or 12 megabytes of RAM,
and a 320 megabyte or 500 megabyte hard drive in a sleek portable case with a 9.5-inch color-active matrix display.
Now we're going to look at three new notebook computers, and we'll start with the Apple PowerBook 540C.
And this is Charlie Trichler of Apple who's going to show it to us.
This is top-of-the-line PowerBook from Apple.
What would give us some of the basic features on it, Charlie?
The other nice feature I want you to show me is you can in fact do wireless messaging here with your PCMCIA slot, can't you?
Exactly. With PCMCIA, we've created the Apple Mobile Message System, which allows you to take a pager card from Socket Corporation.
This is really the centerpiece of the technology, the hardware.
So that's a pager on its own. I could be carrying that inside my jacket pocket right now.
Exactly. See the screen up top?
And it says I have, in fact, a new message.
And then I could stick it inside my PowerBook?
Why don't you do that?
When you drop it in, the way the computer integrates it, it takes a look at the card.
So the computer is always checking to see what's on the card and what's available.
Once it sees the card, it takes the information off the card and then pulls it into the computer to display it to you.
And it's not just paging.
For instance, if I'd sent you an appointment, maybe to meet somebody at a certain time at a certain place,
it can see that it's an appointment, bring that data in, and then display it up on the screen,
automatically launching your calendar, automatically creating that file.
Okay, so sticking the card in there does stuff on its own, and it will go into my calendar and actually put in the information.
Exactly.
Yeah, so that probably wasn't a cheap laptop in 1995, which I wanted to sort of say at least,
and I hate continually going back to the specialists, but I guess they're both guys that killed people for money.
But you didn't really get any indication of why this guy was an assassin,
because he wasn't living a flashy, extravagant life.
You don't really get any idea of his wealth.
And aside from those flashbacks to killing his friend or his mentor, you don't really even get to know this character at all.
No, there's no background on him whatsoever.
But I mean, you don't even really get to see how he's living.
If he did go from being a heartless hitman to a good guy, what caused the transition?
There's none of that.
He gets his first contact or contract that we see in this film for the billionaire they're supposed to kill for whatever parent reason at the funeral.
We go to the funeral, this billionaire is in a wheelchair, whatever his reasons were for the kill, doesn't matter.
He was just some sort of, I can't remember the reasons.
The person who hired Robert Rath to kill the billionaire had their reasons.
Robert Rath is saying this is his last one and he's out of the game or whatever.
Yeah.
That's the one he gets offered, what?
Two million or?
200,000.
200,000.
All right.
Yeah.
He's going to retire on 200 grand.
Why is it every Stallone movie he's retiring or whatever?
It's just such a, it's just such a lazy, you know, writing cliche.
The hitman with the heart of gold who's just going to do one more job before he hangs it up.
I wish Jeff Ferry was here to dismantle the amount of weak writing that's going on here.
Oh, well, yeah.
We also find out during this funeral that Antonio Banderas, Miguel, his character, he's been hired also to kill this billionaire.
And actually, he does the killing.
Unbeknownst to Robert Rath, this guy gets snipered, silent, snipered from a distance by Miguel, Antonio Banderas' character.
Stallone, Robert Rath's character, turns around and he's holding a gun in a big arm cap.
This is an awesome scene.
I got to say that this scene has a lot going for it.
You've got the mocked up cast with the hole for the gun and you get Antonio Banderas, who I think if Donner had let him pump the gas a little bit more, we would have gotten a really, really great James Woods level performance.
He would have James Woods' movie, but it feels like Banderas was just pulled in just a little too much.
He was way over the top.
It was like goofy.
I hated his character.
I agree.
One of the only highlights for me was Banderas.
No, he irritated me.
He irritated me.
And the first thing I wrote about him was Antonio's laugh.
No, his laugh and his sound effects.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, you really look like I'm doing that.
This is stuff you get when you watch this on camera.
Ryan's impersonations continue.
Now, Doug, you have some experience here, possibly, or at least some knowledge.
The police response here is incredibly quick.
Was there some kind of police escort maybe for this billionaire?
Or it seemed like the cops arrived immediately.
Yeah, they had to be.
This guy, was he a mobster or something like that?
If there's a high profile funeral, cops usually are close by.
Fair enough.
So, yeah.
So, the police response, not as surprising to me.
I mean, the fact that they got Banderas was surprising to me.
Well, that's the other thing.
I mean, if you have that expectation of a police presence, why be as brazen as Banderas was?
Or are they showing his inexperience as an assassin as opposed to Robert Rath's sly, pun intended, tempted, concealing his gun?
I thought Miguel had a good setup.
He was posing as like a grave digger.
He just wheels his way through, blows the guy away, and then carries on.
I thought his setup was better than Stallone's in that damn cast.
Why the cast?
It would have been less obvious just to have a gun in his hand.
Well, because you don't see the hand either, right?
Most times when somebody's arms in a cast, you see their fingers sticking out.
Right.
Not just like a stump.
Or a cannon.
With the piece of tape on the edge of it to cover up the hole.
You know, he was so proud of that little detail.
I loved even more is when the fireworks started, he tried to tape the hole back up, but then the tape kept flapping off when he was running.
I wonder if there's a part of Stallone when he put that cast on where he, did he go, I'm not too sure.
I'm not too sure about this.
Or did they go, no, this is good.
We're good to go.
This is incognito.
This get up right here.
I almost feel like that's a move he had used before.
I know this might be nitpicking.
He's got a handgun in there.
And the way the cast is, it's down.
Especially at a distance to get an accurate shot, you have to get a sight picture.
With his arm in the cast, he's shooting from the hip, basically.
He's a trained assassin.
No.
I don't care.
There's no way.
He's a trained.
Don't you question Robert Rath and his ability.
He's an assassin for 15 years.
This is what he's been doing nonstop.
He knows how to shoot from the hip.
Come on.
How dare you?
By the way, Craig, Stallone was paid $15 million for this film.
So on a $30 million budget, half of it went to Stallone's paycheck.
Hey, good for him.
Hey, get it while you can, right?
Every single gun in this movie has a silencer.
Except for the one cop shot at the beginning of the funeral scene.
Yeah.
That's like another 90s thing, though, right?
Yeah.
Silencer?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And silencers are a myth anyway.
They don't suppress the sound of the shot.
That much?
They suppress the report, which is the explosion.
The slide recoiling makes a loud sound.
The bullet expelling out of the muzzle is still going to make a sound.
It's just not going to be that loud pop.
I would assume the silence method in movies is probably exaggerated.
Mm-hmm.
I can't recall how suppressed it is, but you know, in a lot of other movies,
when they do the silencer, it sounds like this.
Boom.
And that's it.
Yeah, this is like...
Yeah.
Yeah.
That sounds like Adam Electer.
Thank you.
Impersonations never end with Ryan.
Or it sounds like Miguel Bean.
Yeah.
I think now that we've introduced Miguel,
how is he so acutely aware of Robert Rath's history,
down to even the details surrounding Rath taking out his friend?
It just seems to me like that's not history that gets recorded,
or at least the official version doesn't get recorded.
This is what I'm getting at.
This whole Assassin's Club.
It doesn't make sense.
We have the beginning of the film.
He's killing a fellow assassin.
We've got Assassins for Hire getting hired by the same guy.
Spoiler alert.
Who happens to be the guy that Robert Rath was supposed to kill at the beginning of the film.
He's hiring all the assassins to make everyone fight everybody.
It's just like this Assassin's Club.
But then you have, like you said, the School of Assassins.
There should be a prequel.
Like, Miguel was studying Robert Rath.
Like, where does he look him up?
As we can see, there's no internet back there.
It's horrible.
Where does he get this research?
It goes to the library.
A for assassins.
What has Robert Rath done in the 1980s?
If you're an assassin and your identity is known, then you're not doing a good job.
Exactly.
And he's his favorite.
Miguel worships Robert Rath.
This is his hero.
It's a personal hero of his.
He's like the Ric Flair of the movie.
Because Miguel even says, to be the best, you've got to beat the best.
Yeah.
So where did you study Assassins in 1995?
I don't know.
But he did.
He studied and he looked up to Robert Rath and wanted to be him.
They both saw each other at the funeral.
Did Miguel know that was Robert Rath?
Well, no.
I don't know.
He didn't recognize him until he was in a taxi.
Because he was talking to him.
So now we know there is a little bit of subterfuge when it comes to studying Assassins.
You may be able to study their work and their methods and their deeds.
But you don't know what they look like.
They're still secret identities.
All right.
That makes sense.
Craig.
Craig, you seem a little non-plus there, Craig.
It's still early here on the West Coast.
So my brain is trying to process some absurdity.
And I just finished my coffee.
So it might kick in.
Miguel gets arrested by the cops.
The cops come in.
They actually subdue the shooter.
Congratulations, cops, without shooting him.
That's pretty good.
He's got a gun in his hand.
Yeah.
And they subdue him.
They arrest him.
Oh, I forgot this bullshit.
Yeah.
Well, here we go.
So they're in the cop car.
And we have the classic.
It doesn't make any sense.
He dislocated his thumb in the back seat.
At what point are you able to slip handcuffs off?
Doug, you're a police officer.
How many people have you arrested that have escaped your vehicle due to dislocating their thumbs in handcuffs?
Well, there's a couple of problems here.
One, well, to answer your question, zero.
I've had females specifically slip out of handcuffs because if you don't put them on tight enough, they're able to squirrel their hand out.
But dislocating your thumb like that, I don't think would work.
Because your thumb still has to go somewhere, right?
I mean, even if it's dislocated, where does it go?
Even if you dislocate your thumb, the meat of your hand is still wider than your wrist.
If the cops put the cuffs on as they should tight enough, there's no way to work your hand out of there.
Dislocates his thumb and he snaps the cop's neck that's driving.
That's another bullshit 1990s thing where you just instantly neck snap.
He grabs the guy's side of his face.
He just turns his head.
This is after he kicks the window out, right?
Right.
Which, hold on, let me talk about kicking the window out.
Please.
Car windows don't break like that.
You think?
I know.
Because I've had prisoners in the back of my patrol car kicking the window.
And the most they're going to do is push the window off its track.
It's not going to shatter like that.
And it takes a good 10 kicks to, strong kicks to do that.
It doesn't happen right away.
So he, like, one kick blows the window out like it's a piece of paper.
He's an assassin.
He reaches out of the car window into the driver's seat and breaks the cop's neck.
He's an assassin.
Only assassins know how to break a neck with one fell swoop with their hand.
Like, fell swoop.
He literally grabs his head.
Live on camera, I'm going to break my neck for the audience.
Okay.
Let's see.
I just broke my neck.
What I liked about this is there was a female cop that he killed, too.
He's like, oh, okay.
Equal rights.
You know, he made no bones about it.
And he kills these two cops driving to his car that's flipped over.
So he shoots them dead on.
A moving vehicle.
Cop dead.
Cop dead.
Right through the window.
So, Doug, again, what kind of marksman do you have to be?
Moving vehicle coming towards you.
You're upside down in a crashed car.
And you're able to shoot both the passenger and the cop in one shot each.
Well, he was on the ground in a prone position.
So as long as if he could see over the hood, I guess it depends on how far away they are.
But I would still say it's unlikely.
Probably not impossible.
But he, I mean, it was very quick.
Very quick.
He killed the first one, killed the second one.
Like, you can train your sights on one, knock them down.
But then you'd have to retrain your sights.
Not like, bam, bam.
I mean, that's not the most unbelievable thing about this part.
So I'll forgive that one.
What's the most unbelievable part?
The neck snap.
The handcuffs.
The kick in the window.
True.
Oh, true.
The taxi cab pickup scene.
Can someone please explain how Robert Rath was able to correlate taking a cab and somehow
assuming that Miguel would take a plane to another country or out of the city and that Miguel would
call the cab company that Robert Rath stole a cab from and then become the fair.
That Robert, okay.
And Miguel even tries to, you know, explain what a great idea it is.
It almost highlights how absurd it is even more.
Did anyone else catch the uncertainty of the taxi cab pickup?
I hated this part.
I hated this part.
This annoyed me so much.
Just the one in a million shot that you have to be with the right, like you said, the right cab company that Miguel calls.
No names of customers.
It's just some guy looking to go to the airport.
Oh, that must be him.
Yes.
Nobody ever calls a cab for an airport ride.
Right.
This is so unique.
But the fact that Miguel thinks it's a good play makes me doubt either one of them being competent at anything.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Right, right, right, right.
Lo and behold, he picks up Miguel.
Miguel doesn't physically recognize Robert Rath in the front seat, even though they saw each other from a distance or they were like the cop car was beside Robert Rath's car when he was arrested.
They looked at each other briefly.
Robert Rath's head is to the back of Miguel's head.
Fair enough.
And he's not expecting him to be the cab driver.
Well, even though as a trained assassin, I'd like to think that I'd be constantly hyper aware of my surroundings.
Yeah.
That's the amazing thing here is that Miguel actually rightfully so wouldn't expect to be picked up by the very assassin that he was in competition with and has admired for years.
Why would he?
Why would he?
So at least that makes sense that he would be completely.
And I always love it when you have in this movie, another movie trope, Craig, is when you have a scene where somebody's supposed to drive somebody somewhere and they don't do the proper turn to the airport or whatever.
Hey, hey, you missed our turn, man.
Where are you going?
And Robert Rath's like, get out of the car.
Get out of my car.
I'm done.
I don't want to drive you no more.
And Miguel's like.
Very smart.
What was his end game?
He was going to wait for him to start walking away and then shoot him?
Yeah, because he couldn't shoot through the glass because it's waterproof.
Oh, my.
What I love about this sequence is that this glass in a cab is assassin bulletproof, but the cop car side window he could kick through.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Exactly.
It was a brand new taxi, though, so it could have had the most state of the art plexiglass.
Okay.
When they did have their little confrontation with each other, when they realized who the other person was, of course, and they're pointing guns at each other and they mentioned, oh, bulletproof glass, aren't you clever?
There was a scene where Antonio Banderas, it's not even that bad of a scene, actually, but he shoots the window.
I actually kind of like this one good scene so far where he said, well, I had to try.
I had to try.
I mean, who knows?
Maybe it wasn't made in America.
That wasn't bad.
No?
All right.
You know, I guess.
If you want to look for a silver lining, sure.
Is this a worse movie than The Specialist?
Yeah, I would say so.
The runtime of this movie, when I sat down to watch this, I was like, oh, it's going to be, you know, 95 minutes, hour 40 tops.
And then I saw that it was over two hours long and I said, oh, what am I about to sit down for?
Because I didn't remember this being a two hour plus movie.
Yeah, they were two hours back in the day, weren't they back then?
No, this is a very ambitious film for 1995.
It's a two hour, 15 minute movie.
That's crazy.
I saw that runtime too, Craig.
And I'm like, oh.
But the other thing is it wastes.
And a lot of movies do this.
This is an exclusive to Assassins.
But a lot of movies load up first third of the movie.
And then they realize, oh, shit, we wasted so much time in the first third that we got to rush to the end.
How long into the movie is it before we get the whole Dutchman and Julianne Moore plot?
And I mean, that's really the plot of the movie.
So it takes them forever to get there to build, I guess, this, you know, there's just so much wasted shit in the first 40 minutes of this movie.
I have a problem with that because, like you said, they load the first, we'll call it the first act.
But the first act is supposed to be like your world building where you're setting up characters.
You're setting up the plot.
But it doesn't do that.
It doesn't do any of that.
We don't know what the hell's going on so far.
I'm legit confused about this movie and what's happening.
But we do know the next contract.
So the billionaire is now dead.
So Robert Rath talks to his employer, whoever, this anonymous employer, who keeps saying, that's no way to talk to a lady.
I guess to fool Robert Rath that he's actually being hired by a female and not a male because big plot twist at the end.
So we get the next contract hit.
It's going to be, of course, Julianne Moore's character, Elektra.
Her internet logo.
Oh, my God.
She's anonymous.
I love how she, too, is an anonymous trade dealer, insider trade.
She's an early computer hacker who offers trade secrets to the Dutch.
What is she doing?
What is it she's doing?
She's gathering information.
What information is she gathering?
What is this information providing?
Did we ever get that?
It's a list of names or something.
What?
I love how they called it an internet logo, which in today's terms is called an avatar.
Avatar, yes.
Back in 1995, the term avatar didn't exist.
So it's kind of cute and adorable what they would have called an avatar in 1995.
They called it an internet logo, which happened to be two green cat's eyes because she's a cat lady.
She's a bonkers cat lady.
She's actually the most deplorable person in this film, in my opinion.
She's horrible.
And that is the core problem of this movie is you've got Robert Rath, who isn't really defined enough to like or dislike.
But you should dislike him out of the gate because he's an assassin.
Antonio Banderas, just because of the amount of senseless killing he does.
And then Elektra, because she's just she's spying on her neighbors.
She's hacking.
I mean, there's no there's nobody to like in this movie.
Yeah, she's not a likable character.
And the only reason we'll cut right down to the chaser.
The only reason why Robert Rath doesn't kill her is because she's hot.
But even like, I think she's as far as a female lead.
What an awful miscasting.
I mean, she Julianne Moore.
She's a pretty lady.
Before you get there.
What I meant to say when I say that she's hot.
I'm saying within this film, Robert Rath finds her attractive.
The character was a 300 pound woman from Walmart.
Oh, yeah.
She would have been dead in the living room.
The other problem with the hitman movies is in Robert Rath's 15 plus year career, he had to have run into attractive women that he was tasked with killing.
Maybe not.
Maybe this is the first cute one.
No 350 pound woman would have the email address meow at Comcast dot cat.
Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
So basically, she is an inside trader or she's giving information about the country to the Dutch who are German.
I'm not sure what they are.
Did she refer to them as Hans Gruber from Die Hard?
Like she kept calling them some sort of nickname.
That's funny.
And I didn't know if that was a...
I didn't catch that.
Yeah, she kept calling them Hans, but not Hans Gruber.
But you almost got the feeling she was calling them not by their real name, but by a diehard name.
I don't know.
Maybe I was reading too much into it.
But they turned out to be Interpol agents, right?
Okay.
Before we get there, yes, I do have a question about that.
And, Doug, I didn't interrupt your earlier point about Julianne's castings.
Go ahead.
I didn't mean to do that.
No, I was just going to say she's an attractive lady, but I don't buy her in this kind of role.
Who else could they have cast?
Sandra Bullock might have been a better cast, ironically, back then.
At that time, yeah.
I mean, Sharon Stone was a good fit in The Specialist.
Yeah, she was.
Actually, you know, this film, the chemistry between Robert Rath and Elektra versus Stallone's character and The Specialist and Sharon Stone, it's night and day.
Their chemistry in The Specialist now in comparison to Assassins, it's like Rocky and Adrian.
There is no chemistry between Julianne Moore's character and Stallone's character.
And I don't know if that was on screen was the issue or how the characters were written or both, but the chemistry is horrible.
But there's a scene in the film where at the motel, there's supposed to be sexual tension because there's only one bed.
And we both can't sleep in the same bed.
And Stallone's character goes to the bathroom and he's kind of like pacing back and forth in the bathroom.
Like you can tell that he's got that feeling like this girl's pretty in this one room, but I'm going to be a gentleman.
And he goes back and sleeps on the floor.
But he's got the little smirk on his face.
Oh, that girl in that bed sure is cute.
I've got feelings for her.
There's no indication that there's any romantic interaction between them at all.
Until that scene, we get the feeling.
But there's no payoff to that.
Well, there is a little bit because remember later in the movie when they're in whatever European city for the final sequence?
European?
No, it's like South America.
Whatever.
You don't, the flamingo music didn't give it away?
I get so lost in Stallone between 95 and 2002.
All of his films took place outside of some, you know, they always end up in some sort of South American, Italy, weird country.
Anyways.
Well, you know, he probably wanted to enjoy the scenery while he was filming.
Probably.
$15 million and he gets to travel to South America.
Sure.
Why not?
Remember that scene anyways in the hotel where he's talking to Julianne Moore because he thinks she's on the balcony for the Day of the Dead ceremonies?
And she's not there, but he has that whole conversation like, oh, yeah.
I never really felt no ways about nobodies until I met you.
And now I don't want to be a assassin anymore.
See, because I met you.
Shockingly, I totally forgot about that scene.
So there was indication, but he's like, Electra, where are you?
Electra.
I know this is a hard movie to get through, but there's a few scenes we got to really, really talk about.
One is I was legit confused.
And maybe you guys can't.
You can help me or not help me.
But the chess playing on the computer.
What did Miguel mean by the rook takes the pawn?
Or how was that connected?
What did that mean?
What's the background on that?
And they were playing, it was time stamped or dated 1980.
So they were recreating a game that was played 15 years earlier.
So did it somehow tie into Nikolai?
It wasn't supposed to be him and Nikolai playing.
It was one game that they've been playing for 15 years.
Like you make one move every six months.
I don't know.
Man, if you guys do that with me, I'm allowing you to win the five moves because that's boring.
I legitimately thought I had missed something when he started playing the chess game.
Well, I'll tell you what I missed.
I missed two hours and 15 minutes of my life that I'd ever had to get back.
That was another thing.
It was like a shoehorned in thing, like a trope that had no setup and no payoff.
It's a question I wrote down to ask you guys because you guys are pretty good about catching plot points that I miss.
And you both have failed me on this.
Look, Ryan, if you're looking for us to catch like minute plot points, this isn't the movie to do it.
Did you notice the Richard Donner?
Apparently he's anti-fur.
He's anti-NRA.
He's anti-anti-abortion.
He's pro-choice.
So did you catch all that?
So there was an anti-NRA on the bus.
Julianne Moore's character spray paint on the fur-wearing woman in the elevator.
That was Richard Donner edition.
And then lastly, there was a waitress at the bar, at the bistro at the end of the film where she was wearing a pro-choice.
Actually, no, so it was pro-life.
It's a pro-life shirt.
So he's anti-gun, anti-fur, and anti-abortion as Richard Donner.
But he's allowed to be, but he put that in his film throughout the film.
This leads me to ask a question is, was Electra's cat like an emotional support cat?
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Well, that's a kind way of saying that she's crazy.
Crazy cat lady?
Yeah, she's a crazy cat lady.
In five more years, she'll have five more cats.
But she's also like the most careless pet owner.
It's not that hard to hold on to the big, huge carrying case that your cat's in.
It's supposed to play, I guess, for laughs a little bit.
Like, oh, she's silly.
She's trying to grab her cat in the midst of a gunfight.
Did you guys laugh at any point during this film where you thought something was clever or funny?
Not intentionally.
I might have laughed at the stupidity of something.
Yeah, some of the irony, ironic, funny parts.
Another really head-scratching part is, are we still in the hotel right now?
Sure.
Rath goes into the boiler room on some maintenance computer and does what?
I actually understood this a little bit.
I think I understood this a little bit.
I got this.
All right.
He's gone to the maintenance computer because he called.
I guess he figured that the maintenance crew has access to the hotel's computer system.
What he did was is he got that fake electrical outage.
So the maintenance guy had to stop his banana lunch break.
And then Robert Rath eats the guy's banana when he's at the desk.
So he's at the computer and what he's looking for, he's looking for people who have rented out more than one room.
Because he figures if you rent out more than one room during this transaction of secret files on a computer, you got the guys who are in one room, like as a troop, with all their separate rooms.
And then you got, as Julianne Moore's character did have, she had a room where she was operating and another room where she was receiving the funds via her little remote control car in the air ducts.
Robert Rath knew that in order for Elektra to carry out this secret deal, she would need to have more than one room.
Lo and behold, he figured it out.
And I guess he figured it out through the cat, something about cats.
The tuna fish.
Tuna fish, that's right.
Because nobody would order tuna fish at a hotel unless they were feeding it to their cat, even though it had mayo.
No.
Well, Doug, that's the answer.
That's why he was on the computer.
Okay.
You know how they have the internet movie firearms database to look up guns and a car database to look up cars?
I want a database where you can look up the tech from these old movies because I love all this.
Like that computer with like the black screen and the green pipe.
I love the tech in all these movies.
You know what the sad thing is, Doug?
Is that hotel probably still is running that same shitty 1995 software because they haven't had a reason to replace it yet.
And if it works, fix it.
Yeah.
Julianne's more of its character.
She's living in some sort of electro.
She's living in an apartment complex.
And she has put cameras in everyone's hotel.
And she's watching, or sorry, everyone's apartment room.
So she's watching her apartment complex the way you would like creeps in everyone's personal life.
Like a soap opera.
Yeah.
Watching people fight.
Watching people make love.
Watch people eat their supper.
Watch people shower.
Can we talk about this for a second?
Is this highly inappropriate or is this just me?
It instantly makes her an unsympathetic character.
She's breaking the first rule of being a neighbor, right?
Well, yeah.
You're right.
You're right, Craig.
It doesn't make me like her.
But it's played.
The way they try to play it in the film.
You know, there's a boyfriend and a girlfriend.
They're fighting.
And she's watching this fight.
She's invested in their relationship the way you would be when you watch a reality show like Survivor, Big Brother, or The Bachelor.
She's watching this relationship on her TV.
She's like rooting for them to work things out.
We're supposed to look at her as a sympathetic character.
Like, oh, she cares about these people that she's spying on.
It's insanity to me.
What she does for a living.
What she does where she lives.
How she acts with people.
There's nothing about her that's funny, adorable, or likable.
If she was antisocial, she was doing this or watching her neighbors to make some kind of connection.
But they also established that she's got a pretty good relationship with her neighbors.
She knows them.
They talk to each other.
So it's not even like she's this sheltered person who is just trying to make a human connection.
She's already made that in person or that physical connection with her neighbors.
So that makes the spying even more terrible.
Those who have seen the movie know exactly what we're talking about.
When Miguel comes to the apartment to kill, as well, he's been given the task to kill Elektra as well.
Go figure.
So the same person that hired Robert Rath and Miguel to kill the billionaire has hired both of them again, unbeknownst to the other person, to kill Elektra.
It's like a trifecta, though.
You know, you have to get the disc.
You have to kill the Dutchman.
And then you have to kill Elektra.
I'm telling you, if you watch this movie as like a pro wrestling match, a lot of the bullshit makes sense.
And then, yeah, well, it doesn't.
So Miguel gets to the apartment, though.
This is what's so dumb about this movie.
Another instant where this is dumb.
Miguel gets to the apartment to kill Elektra.
That he knows she's female.
He mistakes the girlfriend as Elektra because he keeps saying, where's the disc?
Give me the disc.
Just who the hell do you think?
Surprise.
The disc.
The disc.
Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait.
And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
I disc.
I just happen to live in the same apartment that your Mark lives in.
So Miguel kills an innocent woman, which I know it's no problem for him.
If she just said, oh, the disc is in my apartment and then he kills her anyways, he thinks he's killed Elektra.
He doesn't even have a physical.
What kind of assassin doesn't have the identification of what your target looks like?
And he had already killed the boyfriend as well.
So before he even gets inside the apartment, I hate I hate when movies do this, where he's touching all the hoods of the cars and he's narrating what he's doing.
I hate when people in movies do that.
And he does it throughout the entire movie.
Yeah, they're not giving the viewer the benefit of the doubt that they're intelligent enough.
Yeah.
Or observing enough to figure it out.
Yeah.
That happening.
Because we're dummies.
Stallone's character, Robert Rath, did that in this film as well.
He narrated what he was looking for.
He said, I'm going to retire after he had these conversations with himself.
I never talked to myself like that in private.
Nobody does.
And he's talking to himself for us to hear his inner thoughts.
And again, Miguel's character does the same thing.
Miguel touching the hood of the car.
I wrote the exact same thing down, Doug.
You got to the words right out of my mouth.
This car is cold.
Yeah.
This porch is too cold.
This porch is too hot.
This porch is just right.
Why does it even matter?
I think he thinks that they've arrived there sooner than later.
So that's why he saw that it was apartment 202 because the car that got there had just arrived.
So he knew that, again, it's the taxi cab syndrome.
This weird ability to narrow down a million scenarios that the person I'm hired to kill lives in apartment 202 because this car's hood is hot.
That's essentially what happened.
Because no other car just pulled up to their apartment.
But that's exactly what happened.
It was somebody else's car.
But he touches two.
He says, cold, cold.
And he finds one that's warm.
He goes, hot.
So that's where you live.
Like, oh, God.
Let's talk about now where Robert Rath has the file that he's going to hand over to whoever he's going to hand it over to.
They do this computer swap in public.
Oh, this is the whole monorail sequence, right?
That's right.
So it's before the monorail sequence.
That's right.
Oh, yeah.
Before the monorail sequence.
He's on the monorail and he jumps out in the middle of the transit.
Why couldn't he get off at the next stop and walk by him?
The old man on the monorail was like an agent of some kind, right?
Is that what he was?
I don't know.
It's never detailed.
The way the old man reacts makes you think that he was.
This is a part where they could have spelled it out for us because it was completely spelled out things where they should have.
So I'm confused as a viewer what's going on.
But I know their inner thoughts about retiring and what cars are hot or cold.
But they don't tell me why this old man.
Because I wrote this down.
Old man with a cell phone.
I think he's the same to the cops.
He's just calling the cops.
This is a guy that just jumped out of the train.
See something, say something.
Exactly.
And maybe it was Robert Rath being an aware assassin.
It's like overly hyper aware.
That makes sense.
I don't know.
The one scene that I really like in this movie is that explosion scene where Miguel turns the table over and uses that as a shield and he gets blown out the window.
Actually, I legitimately like that part.
Can we talk about the directing of this movie?
Because you just reminded me of how atrocious some of this movie is shot.
And with that 1990s slow motion that they love to do.
Oh, yeah.
I agree with you.
It was really cool to see.
The concept of the scene was cool.
But I think the execution was poor.
The blocking was weird.
The amount of time it took for things to happen was weird.
The classic slow motion jump out of the way of the bullets.
Robert Rath jump.
It seemed like Robert and Elektra ended up together when they were previously pretty far apart prior to that explosion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The explosion in the apartment with the gas.
Classic, classic lighting the gas on fire.
Mm-hmm.
Richard Donner loved doing that.
He did it through his Lethal Weapon film.
So why not in Assassins?
Sure.
Okay.
Well, we're getting near the end of the film here because now we see whoever's been hiring Miguel and Robert Rath together has now hired Miguel to kill Robert Rath.
And there's a best scene in the whole movie.
It's one of my favorite gifs.
Is Antonio gets the – or Miguel gets the indication he is to kill his mentor – or not his mentor, but his hero, his assassin hero.
And he does that –
How sweet it is.
How sweet.
Like he's so excited that he gets to officially kill.
Is this when he's in the bathtub?
No, he's sitting down.
No, this isn't the bathtub.
But he does that same type of behavior in the bathtub as well.
Yeah.
And he's like – yeah, he's typing like this.
Oh, one hand.
One hand typing.
Perfect grammar.
Caps locks and everything at the beginning of the sentences.
Punctuation with one hand.
This is where we also get the reveal that the disk or the computer that Robert was supposed to exchange for some money.
Ended up not having the right information.
Like, Electra had done a swap out.
So, all these guys did was confirm that there was information on the disk.
They didn't validate it any other way.
It was like, well, it's not an empty disk.
It's got information on it.
So, that's got to be it.
Yeah.
How did he do that?
He opened his computer to show that it had something on it, right?
Yeah.
But he himself didn't even know that it was fake.
Because that money briefcase blew up.
And he thought he turned over the disk.
So, he had no money.
And he had no leverage.
Because he thought he turned over the disk.
But then she reveals, ha ha, I swapped the disk.
So, what they got was nothing.
Universe crossover.
Ray Quick from the specialist made that briefcase bomb.
Well, no, I don't think Ray Quick would have made it detectable by radio frequency.
Oh, that's right.
Maybe it was James Wood's character.
The end sequence where Robert Rath is getting the funds at whatever.
Whatever the funds were given.
$20 million was given to him to do this exchange.
And the bank was taking forever.
And there's a whole sequence where he.
Well, he basically does the transfer and then closes the account immediately.
Which, I'm sure from a bank perspective, there's a lot of things that need to happen in order to do a $20 million transfer.
But then also close out an account and pay somebody.
Sure.
And that might be legit, the timeline on how long it takes.
They do this on purpose because they want to literally sweat out.
Or make Miguel sweat and wait.
This whole idea of romanticizing that Miguel is going to stay in the window.
And shoot Robert Rath for the same window that Robert Rath used earlier in the film in a flashback sequence where he shot his mentor and friend, Nikolai.
Why did Robert Rath automatically just assume that Miguel would fall for this?
That this would be something that he needs to do?
Well, especially if Miguel was such a student of Robert Rath's history.
Wouldn't he have known all of the details surrounding how long it took?
How long he waited?
The fact that he went down to the bank to check.
If he was such a student of the history of Robert Rath, he wouldn't fall for some of this.
He was also pretty sure that he wouldn't shoot him until he saw his eyes.
He put a lot of faith in that theory.
Why did he just wear a low-brim hat or sunglasses when he walks out of the bank?
There's got to be other egress points out of the bank too, right?
Yeah.
So the plan was, of course, that when Miguel got tired of waiting, he was going to come out to see what is taking so long in the bank, go to the bank, confront Robert Rath in public, which there can't be a shootout in public because there's bank guards there, of course.
Which I don't understand.
This guy just karate chopped his way out of a police car, but he can't take care of a bank security guard.
He could have literally just walked into the bank with his gun, shot Robert Rath, shot the security guard, and walked out.
That's all he had to do.
This is the same guy that took out six cops at the beginning of the film, can't take out one security guard inside of a bank.
The idea was that when Miguel comes to the bank, Elektra was going to go back to the loft and grab the assassination rifle.
So when Miguel goes back to assassinate Robert Rath walking out of the bank, lo and behold, he has no more gun.
Elektra, of course, screws that up.
She gets caught herself.
Miguel comes back, and then they have their end sequence shootout, discussion, cat and mouse chase inside of this burnt out chapel hotel or whatever this thing is.
Well, the hotel had been out of operation for a couple of years.
It had shut down, and nobody wanted to buy it and renovate it.
That hotel, every floor was made out of styrofoam.
Everyone kept following through everything.
Did it close immediately after Stallone shot Nikolai?
And then how long does it take for a building to reduce structurally?
More than 15 years, I think.
And that's assuming that they closed the day after he shot.
The building was functional after.
It was only shut down for eight years because of the fire.
Oh, there was a fire.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
I didn't pick that up.
Me and Doug both most have tuned out at the same exact time when that guy was explaining why the hotel wasn't operational anymore.
It was because of a fire.
It was eight years ago.
And this is South America.
They take their time in renovating stuff around there, I guess.
And when we're at this walk in her through the hotel showing it to her, I couldn't focus on anything but how much he was sweating.
Yes.
There's a lot of sweating.
Is this real sweat?
Are they sweating for real in this on-location shoot?
I wondered that myself because she, in the cemetery, when she's walking around the cemetery, she's sweating.
Obviously, Miguel's sweating the whole time he's in the loft waiting.
Have you guys ever been to South America?
No.
It's hot.
I'm telling you, these countries, when you step off, you're sweating.
So it's legit if they're running around working, just working, the sweat could have just as easily been legit.
I can't imagine they would have had to overdo it with a lot of the scenes.
It's probably very hot.
And speaking of which, can we talk about Antonio Banderas' acting losing his mind waiting in the tower?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He got so mad because he had to pee in a bottle.
This guy is an assassin.
Should be patient.
His job is to be patient, to wait, to seek out his mark.
And I'm not even an assassin, and I know what it's like to be an assassin.
Like, this guy, who's apparently studied from the best, seems to be a pretty good assassin.
He's being hired by some top-notch people.
But he's panicking having to wait five hours in one room.
Any thoughts on that?
No thoughts.
Case closed.
Ryan, great closing arguments there.
Man.
Let's talk about the very end sequence.
So Nikolai comes out of the shadows.
Okay.
So Robert Rath and Miguel have a big shootout.
And they're about to kill each other or whatever.
Miguel's out for the count.
He's not dead.
And the big reveal happens where someone says from the shadows, that's no way to talk to a lady.
But it's a male's voice.
The man comes out.
It's Nikolai, the man that Robert Rath was hired to kill.
And he betrayed at the beginning of the film with flashbacks.
They would find out they were partners or friends or both.
Don't move.
Throw it away.
Throw it away.
That was no way to talk to a lady.
Nikolai.
If this film had gained any goodwill leading up to it, it would have lost it.
It had no goodwill to give up.
So it just made the facepalm twice as hard because it's just, it's complete nonsense.
And it takes away any kind of character work that they had done trying to build up Robert Rath by saying,
Oh, this guy, he thought he killed 15 years ago.
He's not really dead.
But you know what?
He's going to be dead in four seconds anyway.
So none of it matters.
And I did love how Robert Rath goes, 15 years, man.
15 years.
You thought you made me think I killed you, but you were alive the whole time.
I've had to carry this guilt for 15 years.
But Nikolai then said, dude, you thought you killed me.
You tried to kill me.
I've.
That's been a long time, my friend.
The years have been good to you, Robert.
He killed you.
15 years ago.
He killed you.
Yes, he did.
I don't understand.
Walking out of that bank was the worst moment of my life.
He always went for the heart.
Predictable.
15 years.
15 goddamn years.
You let me think I killed you.
Son of a bitch.
You're forgetting you shot me.
You son of a bitch.
In fact, I'll say right now, the best character in the whole film is Nikolai.
He's the only one that made sense.
He got betrayed by Robert Rath at the beginning of the film.
Got shot by his buddy and he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
So that's how he survived the assassination attempt.
Went into hiding.
Planned out this grand revenge scheme.
Messed with Robert Rath's life for a little bit.
He basically catfished Robert Rath.
And.
Exactly what he did, yeah.
Why did you send me a?
The Cold War was ending.
I needed to die.
To leave no past behind.
You delivered me.
You must be the mark.
You must be the contractor.
I'm disappointed, Robert.
You were supposed to kill her.
You thief.
A good one.
I'm retired.
You were so good.
I had to use both my best to track you down.
I had to use both my best to track you down.
So there's something on that disc that would bring you back to life.
Enough information to expose us all.
Especially me.
Why can't you two just kiss and make up?
This is sad for me, Robert.
Sentimental, but I did not want to find you alive.
I'll ask this question to you guys.
There was a small, because I hadn't seen this movie in 23 years.
So I actually forgot the twist.
I actually forgot a lot of stuff.
Like I, for, I put this out of my memory for a lot of reasons, I guess.
I, so I forgot the whole movie, essentially.
One thing I did forget.
And I actually was genuinely disappointed.
Because there's a part of me, because this is a Richard Donner film.
This is 1995.
There was a small part of me that thought and or considered, had this movie done well, they could have done Assassin's Part 2 with Miguel and Robert Rath, literally as assassin partners, kind of a love-hate relationship, almost like an assassin comedy duo.
There was a point in the film, you know where I'm going with this.
There was a point in the film where they shook hands and made up, where they were going to let each other be.
And I actually thought to myself, that would actually be a good way to end.
That they actually both leave.
Thank you.
So, now what?
I'm finished, kid.
What do you mean finished?
The history stops here.
No more.
I'm gone.
I quit.
That would make me number one.
Number one.
No.
I could live with that.
Could you?
Absolutely, compañero.
To live with it, Miguel.
Live with it.
It was very nice meeting you, Robert Rath.
It was very dangerous meeting you, Miguel P.
It was like a mutual respect there.
Yes.
That actually would have saved the film some sort of decorum of like, okay, at least that ending was a little bit original.
That the two guys that were like this, the whole film, they worked together at the end, killed the Nikolai guy who's been effing them over this whole film.
And they shake hands and they shake hands and say, you know what?
You're number one.
I don't want it anymore.
And they stuck with that.
And Miguel goes, I'm number one.
I get to be number one.
And then that's it.
Yeah.
But then they had to go through the pro wrestling handbook and do the cliche double heel turn.
You know, Miguel turns face.
But then he says, uh-uh, I'm going to turn heel again.
Yes.
Exactly.
It was like we didn't even make it to Saturday night's main event before he went face, went heel, went, you know.
The turn was too quick.
You know, as long as you are out there, I'll never be number one.
So, want to say goodbye about me?
Huh?
No.
No goodbyes.
Goodbye, Miguel.
I was legitimately disappointed.
I was like, no, that's so cliche.
And then he shoots him behind his jacket.
And he sees the reflection in her sunglasses.
They go to walk off together to spend $20 million.
They're like, oh, before we go, don't forget the money.
She grabs the briefcase.
And then the movie ends.
Can I say one more thing that annoyed me?
To no end in this.
Yeah, please.
If we've missed anything, let's go ahead and say those things.
The whole her smelling like jasmine thing.
Oh, yeah.
Because he smelled her perfume in her apartment.
And then he smells jasmine in the cemetery, which makes him think that she's there because she's the only person in the world that wears jasmine scented perfume.
And then he finds a jasmine plant.
And he's like, oh, there's jasmine everywhere.
Of course, he's narrating as he's doing it because we're idiots.
And then at the end, he's about to shoot wrath.
He sniffed and he turns his head and he goes, Jasmine.
Which stalled him enough for her to intervene before he was able to kill Robert Wrath.
But the fact that he has to keep saying jasmine to let us know.
Yes.
He understands.
Does anyone know what jasmine smells like?
I gotta go smell some.
No.
So we're losing Craig.
He's done with this film.
He is done.
Holy smokes.
Okay.
You have to wonder how much of the budget went to paying for the rights to use Rolling Stones music at the beginning and the end.
Well, I thought the song at the end was a cover.
It was a Stones song, but it was a cover, wasn't it?
It was like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan.
Yeah.
Done by the Stones.
Okay, that's right.
The Stones were – there was never a point where the Stones weren't the effing Rolling Stones.
I mean, it can't be cheap to use Rolling Stones music in a movie.
No, I don't think – I think it's like $10,000 to $50,000 for a song.
It's not cheap.
Let's talk about some side note trivia stuff.
Mel Gibson was initially wanting to direct this film, if you can believe it.
I kind of wish he had.
I agree.
Richard Donner felt that Stallone and Antonio Berenderas, it would have been a better film had the actress switched roles.
That doesn't even make sense.
No, I agree.
I knew that trivia before I saw the film for the second time.
I tried to picture Stallone being the really, really kind of the bad guy.
The student doesn't make sense.
No.
No.
Oh, the same cat that's in this movie is the same cat for The Specialist.
Oh, is it?
Yeah.
That's actually interesting.
There we go.
That's the universe crossover.
That's the universe crossover.
I told you.
And what do you call the cat?
Timer.
The cat was Timer, right?
Yeah.
In this movie, the cat was called?
Pearl.
That's right.
Good job.
Why didn't she bring the cat to South America?
I don't know.
Was it quarantine laws?
Or, I mean, did they legally enter the country?
She brought the cat down the street for the transaction with the Dutchman.
You'd think, like, even the cat plot point doesn't make sense.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
Yeah.
We're done with the plot.
Kevin Bacon, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Woody Harrelson, and Wesley Snipes were all considered
for the role of Miguel at some point.
Can you run through that list again?
Kevin Bacon, Tom Cruise, which, interestingly enough, Tom Cruise did play a hitman later.
What was that movie by Michael Mann?
Collateral Damage?
That's right.
No, no.
Collateral.
Oh, collateral.
So, Tom Cruise did play a hitman.
So, it's interesting that Tom Cruise was considered for this role, so he may have had that bug in
his ear to play that type of character, but did it in a much better film called collateral.
Let's just say collateral is a great film.
Directed by Michael Mann.
Fox is in it.
Jamie Foxx, yeah.
Woody Harrelson?
Woody Harrelson, which I could have seen.
I could see that.
I think that would have actually been really cool.
I think that's a role that Woody would have run with.
And check this out.
And Wesley Snipes.
It would have been Demolition Man Redux.
Yeah, and that's probably why they didn't do it.
And Johnny Depp, which, again, Johnny Depp, he's irritating, but he's a good actor.
And he would have played kind of a good, kooky, crazy guy.
But they went with Antonio, or that's the one who took it.
His star was near its peak at that time, right?
I think he was kind of a rising-ish star.
He wasn't quite...
He was getting there, because he did have some of those Robert Rodriguez films under his...
I knew who he was when he was in this film back in 95, so I did know who he was.
When did Philadelphia come out with Tom Hanks?
91 or two.
He was his boyfriend in Philadelphia.
That's right, so I stepped on you there.
So you said, yeah, he was Tom Hanks' boyfriend in that film.
That's right.
I forgot about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
We know there was a bit of a reunion with Antonio Banderas and Stallone and the Mel Gibson connection
in a weird way for Expendables Part 3.
Antonio is one of the...
Him and Wesley are the two reasons to watch Expendables 3, right?
Oh, I love that film.
Side note, Antonio Banderas and Stallone became good friends after this film.
I could see Stallone being a really good friend or mentor to somebody like Antonio Banderas,
who's sort of on his way up in Hollywood.
I'd imagine the conversations and the advice that Stallone could give to a young actor that's
sort of in the same lane as Sly.
I'm sure there were some priceless jewels of wisdom that Stallone imparted on Antonio.
Oh, probably.
Well, any final thoughts, guys?
Why don't you just say who you are, from what shows you hail from, and we'll close this behemoth.
All right, I'll go.
I'm Doug from Rocky Minute.
It's a podcast where we cover the movie Rocky, and we're currently in Rocky 2, one minute at a time.
Find us on a podcatcher of your choice.
Catch up.
We have 118 episodes in Season 1, and we're into week...
We just wrapped up Week 2 of Season 2.
We're having a lot of fun over there.
Yeah, you guys are awesome.
And I'm Ryan from the Going the Distance, the Rocky Series podcast.
We're currently in Season 4, where we're covering Rocky 4.
We also, throughout our show, have interviews and side episodes, like this one that you're listening to now via our channel.
Can't say enough good things about Doug and Rocky Minute.
Check them out.
And, of course, Craig, the godfather of the Sly podcasting community.
Craig and Slycast.
But I just wanted to say I love you guys.
That's awesome.
We love you, too.
Yeah, Slycast, we're slowly working our way through the Loan's filmography, film by film.
We're next going to cover Judge Dredd.
Hopefully it's within the next two months.
It's kind of hard to get that whole gang together.
Everybody's so popular in their side ventures.
Mike Cunda has just blown up the way I knew he was going to, because that guy is so passionate and so talented and just so dedicated to what he's doing with his film tour and the Pretender documentary now that's cleaning up at film festivals.
Yeah, I can't wait to see it.
Jeff Ferry's got his own sort of Kevin Smith minute going on, so they're doing Mallrats currently.
And then the other Jeff, Jeff Hewlett, has the whole tricorder transmission network going on, so everybody's keeping busy.
But we're going to be doing Judge Dredd next and looking forward to it.
Slycast has been a lot of fun.
And, Ryan, I do want to say at the beginning of the episode, I said I hated you.
But you know what?
Working our way through this film wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, so hate's too strong of a word.
Aw, thanks, man.
At least we had fun with it.
Oh, of course.
But the problem with this film, I think it's, and just to tie it up here, is it's not as bad as The Specialist.
So it's that fine line between it's trying to be a decent film, but it fails at being a decent film.
But it's not silly like The Specialist was, or over the top like James Woods' character was.
And the characters were annoying.
I didn't know what was going on.
So it actually ended up just being a bad film.
But it's not so bad that it's good bad.
It's just a bad film.
I would watch The Specialist again probably this year if I had the chance.
And that's not the case with Assassins.
Unless I review this movie again in the next 23 years, I don't think I'm going to watch it again in the next 23 years.
So those who are listening to this right now in their earbuds are sort of the Rocky Minute Podcast, the Going the Distance Podcast, or Slycast.
So I just want to say, find us on Twitter.
Find us on Facebook because we will be putting out again to the public our votes, our choices for you guys to vote on.
If you want to join us in the next one, just join our social medias is what I'm saying so you can know when that is and you can join the discussion.
So we want to thank those who listen live and also who are listening now in your earbuds at home.
And then also, this is also going to be on the YouTube channel archives.
If you do want to go back and look at our mugs.
It's there forever.
Go for it.
Yeah, we've got on the channel.
It's called the Sylvester Stallone Podcast Network.
Find us on YouTube.
And right now we have this one, Specialist, and Coppola.
So we've got three in the can, boys.
All right.
Hey, Craig.
We struggled a little bit the other night when we were recording for Rocky Minute about what this channel was called.
Yeah.
The Sylvester Stallone Podcast Network.
Find it on YouTube.
Like and subscribe so you'll see when live notifications will come on your phone when we go live too.
All right, guys.
Take care.
Bye.
Just the grease from your finger, the rolling the balls on the inside.
It's the same idea.
As my finger comes close, it automatically senses my finger approaching.
So I can just go in here and touch it, and I'm just pointing with my finger, which theoretically is the most natural thing to do.
It does.
After a while, it starts slipping.
Exactly.
It starts to plug it up.
And it's big.
It is large.
So if you take a look at the size, it's pretty big.
And here you can see it.
And if we take a look at it on a side, you can see it's extremely thin.
Stick it inside the slot here.
Like that?
Okay, here we go.
Let's shove it all in.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Come on!
Come on!
you