[Review] The Assassin (4/10)

I very seldom ask this question, but what did I just watch?

This is my first time encountering a Hou Hsiao Hsien's work, and this was not an encouraging introduction.

I don't know if his movies are always shot in this way, but it is a very strange way of storytelling. The dialogue are streamlined down to only what was necessary. I felt a lot of things were left up to the "jumping-to-conclusion" by the audiences.

But not only that, it's as if I just jumped into the middle of a bigger story that had a proper beginning and ending but I was just not privy to it.

However, the way Hou and his cinematographer Lee Ping Bin shot this film, it was definitely beautiful. His locations looked amazing and I would be very surprised if there was any colour correction done to each shot. Everything looked completely natural, which lent itself to the realism of the story and that time period as well.

Also, this is the first director who knew how to direct Shu Qi. Everything else that I have seen from her, she looked horrible pretending to be cute. Although, there was a few things that I would nitpick in terms of certain shots - especially with the action sequences which was heavily edited and very short; not something I would expect when it came to a movie titled The Assassin.

Overall, I thought it wasn't easy to understand what was going on. The dialogue was very little, very curt, and used the older way of speaking the Chinese language. Without the English subtitles, I would be even more confused.