Assassination Tango
RATING: R
STARRING: Robert Duvall, Luciana Pedraza, Rub??©n Blades, Kathy Baker, and Julio Oscar Mechoso
DIRECTOR: Robert Duvall
PRODUCERS: Robert Duball and Rob Carliner
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Francis Ford Coppola and Linda Reisman
WRITER: Robert Duvall
DISTRIBUTOR: United Artists (MGM)
GENRE: Thriller/Film Noir
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Adults
SUMMARY: In Assassination Tango, Robert Duval plays John, an older assassin who begins an affair with his tango instructor while he waits to assassinate a high level general. He gets called to go to Argentina to take a big job. When he gets to Argentina, he finds out that things are more complicated than they should be. While waiting to assassinate a high level general, John becomes enamored of the tango and starts taking lessons from a sultry woman named Manuela. He begins an affair with Manuela, but he also has a prostitute visit him on a regular basis. John takes it into his hands to kill the general early. All the conspiracies break loose, people are imprisoned and shot, and John makes it back to New York.
Robert Duvall is a terrific director and an amazing actor with an ear for accents, although he never totally abandons the persona of Robert Duvall. Assassination Tango, however, is a depressing film noir that focuses on the underside of life and offers no hope whatsoever. Duvall's direction is immaculate, but the storyline is so dark and bleak that one can only leave the theater depressed.
CONTENT: Eclectic pagan worldview with a cynical humanist perspective that nothing matters as well as some shots of Christian crosses and the immoral message that crime does pay; 36 obscenities; several point blank shootings, minor amount of blood, threats of violence; several instances of implied fornication, one with prostitute; upper male nudity; drinking; smoking; and, multiple sex partners, corruption, and deceit.
Dreamcatcher
RATING: R
STARRING: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, and Tom Sizemore.
DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros.
DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kasdan
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Bruce Berman
PRODUCER: Lawrence Kasdan and Charles Okun
WRITER: William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older Teenagers and Adults
SUMMARY: Dreamcatcher is about four friends, each gifted with psychic abilities, who must use their powers to save the world from an alien invasion, an incursion by vicious worm-like creatures with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth. Though tense and thrilling at times, Dreamcatcher's offensive scenes, graphic gore and mixed worldview will likely nauseate people more than it excites them.
Dreamcatcher is padded by a subplot that portrays U.S. military forces trying to contain a red plague, nicknamed "ripley" after Sigourney Weaver's character in aliens. Apparently, the military has secretly fought against alien invasion for decades. Meanwhile, the operations commander, Colonel Curtis (Morgan Freeman in his first over-acting role to date), goes a little crazy on account of all the years of cover-up and destruction.
CONTENT: Mixed pagan worldview of an alien invasion of earth and four friends trying to stop it, with humanist, evolution, occult, redemptive, and moral elements such as human beings fight an invasion from "advanced" alien species, psychic abilities among friends, and boys who use alien powers to find and rescue missing girl, plus some redemptive metaphors where friends of alien protector of earth with special powers refer to him as a "perfect person" worthy of praises, friends work together to try to save the world from invasion, references to good versus evil, and one quick prayer uttered; about 77 obscenities (25 f-words), five blasphemies, four profanities, nine other uses of God's name in exclamations or tense scenes (as in "oh my god" and "thank god!"), one crude hand gesture.
