Movie review: ‘Assassination’ (1987)

FloridaGator80

Dipping far back into the cinema archives, you’ll find a bunch of flicks that stink which featured major stars. Back-in-the-day, they were churned out year-in and year-out to cash in a star’s name and the stars cashed a check and didn’t complain that their artistic sensibility would be violated by starring in a bad movie. “Assassination” with Charles Bronson is an excellent example of a film that’s more TV movie than it is a motion picture and it looked bad back then and it looks even worse today. However, don’t turn your nose up at these annual-paychecks-for-stars kind of films. After all, they do feature a star and with “Assassination,” you get Charles Bronson! Plus, you get a subplot of an impotent president as one reason for the assassination plot. You’d have to suspend your disbelief if it was in the Clinton era!

‘Assassination’
(1987; 88 minutes; rated PG-13; directed by Peter R. Hunt and starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Jan Gan Boyd)

BRONSON OFFERS UP A THICK SLICE OF CHEESE

I’ve written before about a film and that it is bad. Well, today, I’m writing that again as I examine “Assassination” with Charles Bronson and co-starring his wife in real life, Jill Ireland. It is a bad flick; it would have been more at home on TV; and the stunts from car chases to motorcycle jumps to boat explosions might have looked OK when it was released, but today appear more than dated and pretty much a second-rate effort.

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Bronson was much better in films such as “Death Wish” (click here for my review) and “The Mechanic” (click here for my review) and both of these show talent that never arrives on-screen in “Assassination.” Actually, no actor’s talent ever appears in “Assassination.”

With “Assassination,” you have the storyline of a senior Secret Service agent (Bronson as “Jay Killian”) who returns to work and gets not the president, but the First Lady (Ireland as “Laramie ‘Lara’ Royce Craig”). He doesn’t like it and she doesn’t like him. It is set up as him representing the sexism of the day and she’s the up-and-coming woman with her own ideas.

Of course, someone is out to get the First Lady and she resists all of the instructions and warnings from Bronson and the rest of the Secret Service. After a couple of “incidents” (everyone calls them “assassination attempts,” while Ireland shrugs them off), she goes all in with Bronson and begins what will become a cross-country chase involving planes, trains and automobiles. Well, to be exact, a train, motorcycles, a dune buggy and boats.

Along the way, Bronson manages to figure out why Ireland is in an assassin’s cross-hairs, but not without a canard or two that every viewer will spot as a canard from a mile away. Naturally, it all works out in everyone’s favor except the bad guys.

Now, for what passes as the primary cast of “Assassination” …

  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, Bronson offers up a wooden performance as “Jay ‘Killy’ Killian.” Ah, well. That outcome is totally expected with the awful screenplay and there was nothing that would allow him to elevate the character. He is even more wooden in the scenes with his love interest – fellow Secret Service agent Jan Gan Boyd. For better work by Bronson, check out the World War II classics “The Great Escape” (click here for my review), “Battle of the Bulge” (click here for my review) and “The Dirty Dozen.” He was also in “ Majestyk” as well as the western classic “The Magnificent Seven” and the crime drama “The Valachi Papers.” One of his other sub-par efforts was in the execrable “The Evil That Men Do.” Bronson died in 2003 at 81 of a variety of ailments.
  • Ireland was recovering from surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer and only reluctantly decided to do the film. It’s too bad that she didn’t pass on this one. Ireland tries to elevate her character as the bossy, uptight First Lady, but, like Bronson’s effort, it just comes across as wooden. Ireland was in more than a dozen films with Bronson, including “Hard Times,” “Love and Bullets” and one of the execrable “Death Wish” sequels. She also had TV experience with such varied programs such as the original “Star Trek” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” with former husband David McCallum. “Assassination” and one other film in 1987 were Ireland’s last of 54 acting credits since the first in 1955. She died of breast cancer at 54 in 1990.
  • Jan Gan Boyd plays “Charlotte Chang” and, while she was the least experienced actor in the primary cast, she does the best job of any actor in the film. She doesn’t manage to elevate or make memorable “Charlotte Chang,” but she does give an energetic performance from a stereotypical screenplay. Jan Gan Boyd notched only nine acting credits between 1985 and her last in 1991, but was in the classic “A Chorus Line” with Michael Douglas and directed by Richard Attenborough. She was also in an episode of TV’s iconic “Cheers” in 1991. She was on single episodes of two more TV shows in 1991 and those are the last acting credits on her resume.

A couple of supporting actors do an acceptable job, but, for the most part, the secondary cast is just that: secondary.

Randy Brooks plays Secret Service agent “Tyler Loudermilk” and Stephen Elliott plays “Fitzroy” on the president’s staff. Each has no chance of being able to distinguish himself, but at least you notice them above the rest. Brooks has been mostly on TV (including an episode of “Mork & Mindy”), but also in films including Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.” Elliott was in films such as “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Arthur” and with Bronson in “Death Wish.” Elliott died at 86 in 2005 of congestive heart failure.

As for the rest? None of the supporting actors have any chance of elevating the film or making their characters memorable for even a moment.

The biggest sin of “Assassination” is its paper-thin plot. The assassination attempts on Ireland appear to have been set up so stunts could be performed. Absolutely none have any verisimilitude whatsoever and all come off looking like the work of any TV show of the era. Heck, even the movie poster shows Bronson with a LAWs rocket launcher … and Clint Eastwood highlighted that weapon in his “Dirty Harry” sequel called “The Enforcer” in 1976 (click here for my review).

Finally, the romantic involvement between Bronson and Jan Gan Boyd is just silly and inappropriate given their ages (and, in the paper-thin plot, of their work). Besides, jokes between or about them (including one about “terminal orgasms”) are just an embarrassment. Sigh and sigh again for Jan Gan Boyd’s character being “Charlotte Chang” and an Asian stereotype reference in the film by another character to the detective character “Charlie Chan.”

So, all in all, “Assassination” is a bad, bad movie. Still, you can find it on a movie network, so, check it out for a look back at 1987.

“Assassination” was a complete disappointment at the U.S. box office, coming in at 114th with only $6 million in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo. The No. 1 film was “Beverly Hills Cop II” with $153.6 million; reaching No. 2 was the Oliver Stone epic about the Vietnam war, “Platoon,” with $136.7 million; and “Fatal Attraction” with third with $125.9 million. Here are the films from 1987 that I’ve reviewed (and it was a sensational year for the big screen):

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • “Assassination” is the 16th and final film with both Bronson and Ireland. Other sources say it was the couple’s 15th film together. Sorry, I don’t have the energy to research this factoid.
  • The White House was used for filming several scenes.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “To answer the question, the white convertible the First Lady was riding in for the Inauguration was A 1952 Chrysler Imperial Parade Phaeton. One of only 3 ever built.” I’m not sure why this entry on IMDb.com starts with “To answer the question,” since no one had asked it!
  • “Assassination” is the only film rated PG-13 that stars Bronson. Of course, he made R-rated and PG-rated efforts, but this one is the only one rated PG-13.
  • The two working titles of the film was “The President’s Wife” and “Assassin.”
  • Ireland met Bronson while he and David McCallum were working on “The Great Escape.” McCallum and Ireland were married at the time of that film’s release in 1963. Ireland and Bronson were married in 1968 after her divorce from McCallum the year before.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Footage of the Presidential Inauguration seen in this movie is actually that of President Jimmy Carter‘s. Specifically, the long shot of the event shows the swearing-in of Vice President Walter Mondale, whose wife Joan Mondale was wearing red, the color of the woman’s clothing standing center stage in the long shot (Rosalynn Carter wore a teal-colored outfit).”
  • Jan Gan Boyd was contracted to be partially nude in a scene with Bronson, but she asked to be clothed. Bronson supported her position and so the scene was altered.
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “Jill Ireland was originally reluctant to play the role of the First Lady, having just had a lumpectomy and battling pneumonia at the time and suggested former ‘Charlie’s Angels’ star Jaclyn Smith for the role. However, she eventually took the role realizing it would work in the context of her memoir ‘Life Wish’ to be published that year about overcoming chemotherapy.”

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