The Assassin's Code

I really dont understand why they have to overuse this word in movies. I get some people talk that way, but to hear it ever 2 minutes gets old. I couldn't watch past the first 10 minutes, and I curse myself on occassion.

Cleveland police detective Michael Connolly (Justin Chatwin) lives under the shadow of his late disgraced cop father. He investigates a shipment of drugs stolen from police custody. Kurt Schlychter (Peter Stormare) is killing lots of criminals involved in the heist. District attorney Laura Consolo (Yancy Butler) suspects a vast criminal conspiracy within the power structure. This is a lower budget crime B-movie. The opening should be a big heist action sequence but the filmmaking is not good enough. The budget is probably not big enough. The story telling needs more clarity. The acting varies. Chatwin is trying hard to be hard. Stormare plays a good killer but he could use more screen time. He should be equal to Connolly in terms of character importance. Other actors are less capable. It's a mixed bag. This movie is trying to be a hard-boiled crime story but it's mostly flat with inferior filmmaking.

Total waste of time. 25 minutes in and I was done. Rubbish.

Due to the film poster and the title & (unimaginative) subtitle, I thought I was going to see a superficial action film. Very wrong, from the beginning I noticed a film with good acting, also in many supporting roles (like Anweis) and even short roles (Cipolla), with a smooth pace (giving space for calm shots of silent reaction of actors), atmosphere, fantastic background music, original scenes, a script with some kind of unexpected twists, etc. Ok, there are quite some cliches - some which work for me well, as making clear it is a detective story, film noir like, etc, and others which don't (the cartoonlike introduction of the assassin, the dumb detective caught of guard -?? -, the bad bad mafia leader). Anyway, the films gains in complexity and has really interesting (and some beautiful) scenes. I enjoyed the film, and to be true, I think the former title should have been kept : Legacy. I finally understand at the end of the movie the actual title, and revealing it then is an interesting idea, but it leads to associate the film to other style of products (assisted by the ordinary poster and the empty subtitle).

I find Justin chadwin to be disingenuous in any action role simple because he's so small. I kept thinking throughout wow he's so small how did he get to be a cop. The film has this silly "private eye in the city" soundtrack of a trumpet playing a sad tune all the way through. A story that's been told a million times, dirty cops and the one good one who brings them down.

I never heard of the film until I saw it on prime. Was not expecting the noir but it worked great. This field hasn't seem to get a lot of attention but it deserves it. Very enjoyable with plenty of action and twists. There are a lot of movies on prime not worth your time but this isn't one of them. Everyone should give this movie a view. You won't regret it. I love noir so maybe I'm being generous but I'm so happy I found this title and gave it a chance.

Very old school, film noire vibe made in a modern style. Very enjoyable. The score is brilliant.

This is a watchable movie more commendable because of its very modest budget. The marketing blurb was somewhat misleading in saying that a ghost-like assassin was stalking the investigative detective, as if said assassin's identity was unknown. We clearly knew the assassin's identity after his dispatch of no less than four victims in the early part of the movie! The over-riding characteristic of this film for me was the very, very pronounced audio - loud musical score, loud sound effects. But this somewhat annoying quirk had a commendable spin-off....it is one of the very few U.S. movies in which the dialogue was easy to follow - no mumbling here. Boy, what a relief. I don't think I'm alone in being critical of the audio, especially diction in films from the U.S. For this improvement here alone, it deserves six stars rather than five.

Worth watching for Stormare's limited scenes and some okay mob stuff. And I have a weird thing for Lifetime diva Yancy Butler, so there's that. But Chatwin chews the scenery shamelessly, the relationship scenes are torture and the dialogue is laugh out loud cop shop. Still, I was only intemittently bored and mostly entertained. Nice fish, too.

Michael Connolly (Justin Chatwin) is a rookie detective assigned to checking in on mail box crimes. When a robbery and a murder takes place he is given the high profile job. This is not a who-dun-it in Cleveland. We knows who did it and Michael has a pretty good idea because Yancy Butler tells him and she was no Huggy Bear.. There wasn't much in surprises. The plot was one we could have picked up from any crime film and it would have played better as a Columbo story. The characters kept the film afloat and they could have build the background info by something other than the boring bar scene. Not a bad film, but one I had trouble remembering five minutes later to write a review. Guide: F-word. Sex. no nudity.