So it turns out that Carlos, a/k/a The Jackal, was a sexual superstar, the world's greatest lover, able to make beautiful women swoon and beg for his lovemaking. And he was also, it turns out, a superhuman acrobatic killing machine, a combination of James Bond, Jack Reacher, and John Wick, able to wipe out would-be assassins by the dozens (including fully equipped Russian hit teams), outshoot professional snipers, jump from rooftops, beat up his enemies, and basically swagger around, sometimes in neat disguises, like an invincible comic-book supervillain.
Aidan Quinn spends the first half of this movie undergoing a highly implausible CIA/Mossad-sponsored training regimen so that he'll be able to impersonate Carlos and eventually kill him -- or that's the plan, at any rate, the "assignment" of the title. The training (including some gratuitous sexual training) is ridiculous; and the movie gets even sillier in the second half, with an equally gratuitous car chase.
The most unfortunate thing about it is that it seems downright worshipful of Carlos, depicting him the way he'd no doubt want to be portrayed, as a supremely glamorous international badass. It almost seems designed to win him fans.
Aidan Quinn spends the first half of this movie undergoing a highly implausible CIA/Mossad-sponsored training regimen so that he'll be able to impersonate Carlos and eventually kill him -- or that's the plan, at any rate, the "assignment" of the title. The training (including some gratuitous sexual training) is ridiculous; and the movie gets even sillier in the second half, with an equally gratuitous car chase.
The most unfortunate thing about it is that it seems downright worshipful of Carlos, depicting him the way he'd no doubt want to be portrayed, as a supremely glamorous international badass. It almost seems designed to win him fans.