Action
Assassin Club (15)
Review: Hit men and women turn their gun sights on each other in director Camille Delamarre’s lacklustre do-or-die death match, which feigns suspense using composer Alexandre Azaria’s bombastic score and some overly enthusiastic editing of action sequences. Leading man Henry Golding pummels his nice guy image from Crazy Rich Asians to a pulp as an expert marksman, who hopes to escape the killing game and is persuaded to undertake one final job before loved-up retirement. Predictably, there is a sting in the tail to his farewell assignment and Assassin Club makes mountains out of narrative molehills, weaving a tangled web of betrayal that audiences will unravel well before Golding’s harangued hero neatly summarises the double-crosses in a single chunk of exposition.
The most emotionally vulnerable exchanges, which verbalise the inner turmoil of Golding’s assassin, lack the same fluidity and force as bone-crunching fights and chases, which have been a trademark of director Camille Delamarre since his feature directorial debut Brick Mansions and The Transporter Refuelled. A gratuitous shower scene to showcase Golding’s tattooed torso is a cheap move out of the Jason Statham playbook.
Drawing on his military training, elite assassin-for-hire Morgan (Golding) has permanently silenced murderers, rapists and deviants around the world to fulfil contracts brokered by his surrogate father and mentor, Caldwell (Sam Neill). It’s a lonely and soulless existence for Morgan from a base of operations in Rome until he falls in love with schoolteacher Sophie (Daniela Melchior). She is blissfully unaware of his true calling with a sniper’s rifle and is increasingly concerned by the number of bruises and broken bones sustained during so-called business trips.
Morgan ultimately chooses love over loyalty to Caldwell but money talks and the hit man begrudgingly accepts a lucrative farewell pay day: six separate contracts, each worth one million US dollars. The targets are fellow assassins including Ryder (Claudio Del Falco) and Yuko (Sheena Hao), who have received the same set of contracts to terminate each other. City streets across Europe are transformed into war zones as Morgan adjusts to life as the hunted, with a tenacious government agent (Noomi Rapace) and a French police inspector (Jimmy Jean-Louis) on his trail. Sophie becomes potential collateral damage as Morgan roots out a Machiavellian mastermind behind the deadly plot to permanently erase him and his kin.
Assassin Club plays an overly familiar game of cats and mice, planting seeds for future instalments featuring Golding’s gung-ho globe-trotter and an alluring arch-nemesis. That’s one contract Morgan should definitely turn down. Dialogue in Thomas Dunn’s script lands with a heavier thud than the body of a gun-toting bad guy tumbling out of a window and onto the roof of a stationary car. Crash, bang but, sadly, no emotional wallop.
Find Assassin Club in the cinemas
Comedy
Renfield (15)
Review: If you’re about to throw a self-pity party then lower the bunting for a moment and spare a thought for Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult). His life truly sucks – literally, when you reflect that his manipulative master is Dracula (Nicolas Cage). For more than 100 years, Renfield has been compelled to care for the fanged fiend, sourcing unsuspecting victims of pure blood to sustain the Count’s life force while he chomps on insects and bugs concealed within a metal snuff box. Crunchy centipedes and flavourful flies bless Renfield with bursts of otherworldly vampiric power to fend off attacks from stake-wielding hunters and pernicious priests.
Director Chris McKay’s twisted comedy recalibrates Bram Stoker’s novel to anoint Renfield as one half of a toxic dependency, who yearns to break free, lease an apartment and trade in the morose disposition and musty suits for pastel hues and sensible knitwear. Screenwriter Ryan Ridley exsanguinates a story idea by Robert Kirkman, co-creator of The Walking Dead, to bless the title character with droll self-awareness as an increasingly violent tug of war between master and minion escalates wildly out of control.
Breathlessly orchestrated fight sequences are slathered in gore as Renfield tears opponents limb from limb, then uses a freshly severed appendage to bludgeon more goons into submission and give delicious new meaning to being armed and dangerous. The backdrop to the bloodbath is present-day New Orleans, a city steeped in superstition that still bears the scars of Hurricane Katrina. Dracula is slowly recuperating in an abandoned hospital. While his master slumbers, Renfield seeks refuge at a local church where Mark (Brandon Scott Jones) facilitates group meetings for addicts of unhealthy relationships and empowers the servant to stand up to his controlling narcissist boss.
The power struggle unfolds on the turf of crime boss Ella Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her hot-headed son Teddy (Ben Schwartz). A lengthy missing persons’ list of Dracula’s victims threatens to attract righteous local cop Rebecca (Awkwafina) so the Lobos retaliate the only way they know: guns ablazing.
Renfield is a giddily entertaining romp through horror tropes that lovingly recreates scenes from Bela Lugosi’s 1931 Dracula to sketch the title character’s backstory before McKay floods the screen with viscera. The zaniness of Cage’s performance is inversely proportional to the amount of impressive prosthetics (courtesy of make-up artist Christien Tinsely) worn during his rejuvenation from sun-scorched devil to full-blooded predator. There are flashes of delirium from the Oscar winner, blessed with 3D printed fangs, but the second half of McKay’s film screams out for unapologetic showboating rather than the unconvincing romantic subplot that functions meekly as a catalyst for the explosive final act. Now that sucks.
Find Renfield in the cinemas
