the assignment movie wiki

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheAssignment2016

The Assignment (2016)

This film provides examples of:

• Asshole Victim : Everybody who Frank murders (except for maybe Sebastian, but even he's a jerk who threw away the money that his sister provided to pay his debt) are criminals whom he notes no one will miss.
• Attempted Rape : Post sex reassignment, Frank is nearly raped by the sleazy owner of the hotel that he was put in. Frank overpowers and beats up the guy, then flees the premises.
• Attractive Bent-Gender : Post unwilling sex reassignment, Frank appears in a very attractive female form (played by Michelle Rodriguez in both cases, though the first in makeup obviously).
• Big Bad : Dr. Rachel Jane, the main villain of the film, who's a mad doctor .
• Big "NO!" : Frank yells this after seeing he's been made physically female.
• Body Horror : Being made physically female serves as this for Frank, especially at first.
• Bond Villain Stupidity : Dr. Rachel Jane, instead of killing Frank (possibly after extended surgical torture) subjects him to an involuntary sex reassignment and leaves him alive that way, with ample ability to track her down. Later, when her mooks catch him, they also didn't search him at all it seems since they miss his hidden gun which he uses to shoot them after waking up.
• Crosscast Role : Michelle Rodriguez plays Frank, a male hitman (by means of a fake beard and some prosthetics initially) who's subjected to an Easy Sex Change by a Mad Doctor who wanted revenge on him because he had killed her brother. For the rest of the film, he looks like Rodriguez normally does (obviously the reason for this).
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check : If Jane could perform an Easy Sex Change that could make you look like Michelle Rodriguez , she should have been able to make enough money to buy whatever revenge she wanted. It's possible however that marketing her techniques would expose that it had been perfected by running an underground clinic where she experimented on homeless people (she's a Mad Doctor , after all).
• Easy Sex Change : It's unclear just how long, but within very little time Jane performs a full set of sex reassignment surgeries on Frank, altering his cheeks, throat, nose and genitals. This isn't possible, willing or not, as he'd need time for recovery from each one. There's no indication that he was held very long however. Of course, since he's played by Michelle Rodriguez , he comes out with her appearance (which is also implausible).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones : Dr. Rachel Jane is coldly indifferent to most people, and views them as simply test subjects. However, she still feels something for her brother, and sought out the hitman who killed him in revenge. That hitman in question, Frank, is also an example. He has a girlfriend he's obviously fond of, and takes care of a pit bull who'd been forced to fight. Additionally, he's got some close Latino friends.
• Evil vs. Evil : Frank is a hitman who freely admits he's bad and has killed many people. Dr. Rachel Jane, his nemesis, is a mad doctor who experimented on homeless people for medical research, and subjects him to involuntary sex reassignment for revenge when Frank kills her brother.
• Fan Disservice : Michelle Rodriguez as Frank shows full frontal nudity. However, as it's after he had been heavily bandaged and underwent extensive surgery, along with them being entirely unwilling procedures which freak him out, this is far less sexy than might be the case otherwise.
• Fanservice Extra : Near the beginning, Sebastian has a sex worker over in very revealing clothes. Frank's girlfriend Johnnie also appears briefly topless, and he interrupts one of his targets having sex with a naked Asian woman.
• Fingore : In the very last scene, it's revealed that Frank cut off Jane's fingers after shooting her (presumably so she couldn't do surgery ever again).
• Frame-Up : After shooting Jane's mooks , Frank makes it appear like her assistant killed them before being shot himself by putting the murder weapon into his hand. The police buy this, and don't believe her that he did it.
• Gender Bender Angst : Frank is very unhappy he was subjected to a forced sex reassignment, and even looks into a surgery that could at least somewhat undo this. However, he settles for vengeance against the mad doctor who did this instead as he's told it would never be the same.
• Gender Bender : Frank gets a full sex reassignment via magic plastic surgery , and the result is him then going from physically male to looking like Michelle Rodriguez (who played him in both cases).
• Get Out! : Frank yells this to one of his allies.
• Guns Akimbo : Frank wields guns in both hands multiple times during the film.
• Hitman with a Heart : Frank is shown to have a soft side. He's got some good friends, loves dogs (adopting one who'd been used for fighting) and displays genuine affection for his girlfriend.
• Hollywood Law : Dr. Rachel Jane is said to have been ruled incompetent to stand trial, so she's put into a mental institution instead, where a psychiatrist evaluates her to see if she's become competent (he decides she's not after attacking him). We see no indication she would be incompetent though, which simply means that they are able to understand the proceedings and aid in their defense. Jane is quite intelligent, so there's every indication she could do both of those things. Being ruled incompetent usually requires that a defendant be severely mentally impaired from disability, a mental illness, brain damage or senility.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard : After his unwanted sex reassignment, Frank gets back at Dr. Jane by mutilating her hands so she could never operate again .
• If It's You, It's Okay : After Frank's unwilling sex reassignment surgery, his girlfriend Johnnie has no problem continuing their relationship, suggesting this.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight : After his involuntary surgery, Frank tries to have sex with his girlfriend (having been made physically female). However, he isn't able to feel anything, and consults a doctor who tells him sensation won't come back for around six months.
• Mad Doctor : Dr. Rachel Jane is an arrogant though highly skilled surgeon with delusions of grandeur who's been stripped of her license for illegal experiments. After that, she operates illegally in an underground clinic, performing more experiments on homeless people for what she claims is advancing medical knowledge. However, when a hitman murders her brother, she subjects him to a sex reassignment both to punish and change him (supposedly) for the better. After he kills most of her employees, plus shooting her, in revenge, she's found out by the police and sent to a mental institution.
• Magic Plastic Surgery : Frank ( Michelle Rodriguez heavily made up to look male) becomes a female version of himself physically (Rodriguez as herself) after undergoing involuntary sex reassignment surgeries. This would in reality require long recovery time between each procedure and have visible scarring (the mad doctor who did it was just that good ).
• Male Frontal Nudity : Early on Frank shows this stepping out of the shower, perhaps to emphasize his appearance before he's given an unwilling sex reassignment.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman : Frank feels up his new breasts after realizing what's happened, while looking at himself in the mirror. He seems more repelled than anything however.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate : Dr. Rachel Jane was a surgeon whose unethical and illegal experiments meant she lost her license. This didn't stop her though-she just went underground with them. However, this is contrasted with normal psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Gales who's assessing her and considers what she did completely wrong and notes she betrayed her oath as a physician.
• The Needs of the Many : Dr. Rachel Jane says her experiments on homeless people were for this, to advance medical knowledge which would benefit millions. Their lives, in comparison, meant nothing to her.
• Pet the Dog : Literally when Frank kills a Russian dog fighter and adopts the pooch, due to having a soft spot for dogs. And again when he learns Johnnie's partly responsible for what happened to him, but is too in love with her to execute her, so he sends her off to Reno for safety and possibly a new life.
• Professional Killer : Frank Kitchen is a hitman, and the plot is sparked by him murdering Dr. Rachel Jane's brother over an unpaid debt he owed to criminals.
• Revenge : Dr. Rachel Jane wants revenge on Frank, the hitman who murdered her brother. So she gets a crime lord to kidnap him, then performs a sex reassignment (partly to "help" him in her view). He's horrified, then seeks revenge on her in turn, along with employees of the gangster who helped kidnap him for Jane, then them and also her mooks .
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge : After learning what was done to him, Frank goes after the criminal employees of gangster "Honest John" who helped Dr. Jane to do this, killing them off before he gets John himself, then Jane and her mooks after this. Jane survives, but is left stuck in a mental institution with no fingers, courtesy of Frank cutting them off.
• Tomboyish Name : Johnnie, Frank's girlfriend. It's unclear if this is short for anything. Aside from this however she isn't a tomboy at all in her appearance or actions.
• Understanding Boyfriend : Johnnie takes it to extreme heights, as she's completely unperturbed by Frank's new appearance, and has no questions or comments beyond noting how different he looks when she first sees him post sex reassignment. She stays with him afterward, completely accepting, without hesitation. It also seems she's entirely aware that he's a hitman, and doesn't mind at all. Then it's revealed that she was the one to set him up for the surgery in the first place at the behest of Dr. Jane, whom she'd been working for the whole time getting her the drugs for her experiments, and stayed around him to keep an eye on him.
• Understatement : Frank's girlfriend notes that he looks different after his involuntary sex reassignment, but makes no further comment. This is putting it very mildly. It's a wonder she recognized him. Before he had a beard and larger nose, as the most obvious examples.
• Villain Protagonist : Frank admits right in the opening voiceover monologue that he's a bad guy, and has probably deserved even more than what was done to him after he killed so many people. However, he isn't completely bad, and is seeking revenge on people that are on his level or even worse than him.
• Assassin's Creed (2016)
• Films of 2015–2019
• Atomic Shark
• Bullet to the Head
• Creator/Walter Hill
• The Assignment (1997)
• MediaNotes/Restricted Rating
• The Assistant
• AmericanFilms/A to C
• Assignment: Venezuela

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Image Fixer
• New Articles
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

The Assignment

“ The Assignment ” is a film that arrives in theaters having already inspired vast outpourings of anger from two groups —the transgender community, which appears to be offended by its very premise, and action buffs, who are put off both by the premise (albeit for different reasons) and what they feel is a lazy execution that fails to offer the requisite thrills. While I am sympathetic to the complaints of both groups (somewhat more for the former) and recognize that it is indeed deeply flawed in many areas, I cannot quite agree with either. This is a modestly scaled B-movie by one of the best genre filmmakers of our time, Walter Hill , that has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn’t quite live up (or down, depending on your perspective) to its borderline sleazy premise.

And what is that premise, you ask? In a nutshell, Frank Kitchen ( Michelle Rodriguez … just keep reading) is a ruthless San Francisco hitman who runs afoul of Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver ), a brilliant but deranged surgeon who has lost her license for conducting various rogue experiments. Frank kills Dr. Kay’s brother, and the good doctor seeks vengeance and experimental research into the importance of physical identity on the psyche. She arranges with crime boss Honest John Hartunian ( Anthony LaPaglia ) to have him grab Frank and bring him to her secret lab, where she proceeds to perform gender reassignment surgery on him. Dr. Kay asserts that the surgery will take away Frank’s desire to kill. Needless to say, Frank sees things a little differently, and, once she discovers that the surgery cannot be reversed, she methodically hatches a grisly revenge plot on everyone involved with her transformation from Honest John and his goons all the way up to Dr. Kay. Helping Frank in her quest is Johnnie ( Caitlin Gerard ), a nurse with whom Frank had a one-night stand before his transformation and who doesn’t seem particularly nonplussed by recent developments, though it seems that she may be harboring a few secrets of her own.

At first blush, one can easily understand why the transgender community might be a tad put off by the very existence of “The Assignment,” but the actual film is nowhere near as offensive as it might initially seem. For one thing, the film as a whole is so willfully and deliberately pulpy in tone (I could easily see a short version of this tale fitting perfectly into the confines of a “ Sin City ” film) that it is hard to take the alleged provocations on display with any degree of seriousness—this is a film that is so archetypal in nature that the sort-of sweethearts at its center are literally named Frank(ie) and Johnnie. Additionally, to suggest that Frank is meant to represent all transgender people is nonsense because he is clearly not one himself, and, outside of the obvious physical construct, little about him changes after undergoing his forced surgery. I would also point out that no less of a filmmaker than Pedro Almodovar used the notion of unwilling gender reassignment surgery as a plot point in his own unabashed genre exercise, “ The Skin I Live In ,” and no one seemed especially put off by it even though the deployment there was arguably more questionable from a taste perspective than what is seen here.

That said, “The Assignment” is still a problematic work in many ways from a purely cinematic perspective. The screenplay by Hill & Denis Hamill (which Hill has been toying with since the late ‘70s) is an awkward construction with much of the story presented in a series of flashbacks, as the now-incarcerated Dr. Kay recounts the story to another psychiatrist ( Tony Shalhoub ). This concept is especially problematic since Hill is at his best when he allows characters to define themselves purely through their actions instead of relentlessly explaining themselves as they do here. The film also screams out for a more overtly stylized visual treatment in the vein of something like his great “ Streets of Fire ”—a fact underlined by the occasional bits of black-and-white photography and comic book-style transitions—that might have also helped to underscore the kind of pulpy approach Hill was clearly going for. Another big problem, at least at first, is the casting of Michelle Rodriguez as Frank. There is nothing wrong with her performance but the early scenes in which she portrays the male version of Frank, complete with a wildly unconvincing beard and a lingering close-up of his genitalia for good measure, do inspire a few bad laughs right when the film is trying to establish itself. For some viewers, it may never recover from that.

For those who can get beyond that, “The Assignment” contains plenty of points of interest. Sigourney Weaver is pretty much a blast throughout as the snidely condescending doctor who sets all of the events into motion. As for Rodriguez, once she sheds the beard, her performance improves greatly. Obviously, we know she can do the steely-eyed badass stuff as well as anyone else but she also gets a couple of quieter moments amidst the chaos where she displays a more vulnerable side without stepping out of character—in one, she consults a doctor about whether the surgery can be reversed and begins shyly inquiring about certain personal details regarding her new equipment. In the other, she is about to go to bed with Johnnie when she realizes that she has no idea of how to approach lovemaking from a female perspective. (“You’ll do fine,” she is reassured in a line that is both funny and strangely touching.) As for Hill, while he is clearly working with a lower budget than usual here (with Vancouver substituting, not too convincingly, for San Francisco), he is still able to establish a convincingly noir attitude toward the material and the scenes of violence are done in a spare and economical style that is a relief from the over-the-top pyrotechnics of most current action films. (He also gets bonus points for employing Giorgio Moroder to deliver a cheerfully retro synth score.)

It is easy to see how the dramatic excesses of the plot could prove offensive to the transgender community, though I can just as easily see “The Assignment” one day becoming a cult favorite in the way that the once-controversial “ Cruising ” would eventually find some fans within the gay community that once scorned it. As an exercise in unapologetic pulp fiction, it gets the job done in a smart, efficient and slyly subversive manner. As the latest entry in the Walter Hill filmography, it definitely belongs on the second tier. Even though it may not be the equal to a classic like “ The Driver ” or “Streets of Fire,” it will do until that next masterwork does come along.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

• Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Rachel Kay
• Caitlin Gerard as Johnnie
• Michelle Rodriguez as Frank Kitchen / Tomboy
• Tony Shalhoub as Dr. Ralph Galen
• Paul McGillion as Paul Wincott
• Anthony LaPaglia as Honest John Hartunian

Writer (story)

• Denis Hamill
• Walter Hill
• Giorgio Moroder
• Raney Shockne

Cinematographer

• James Liston
• Phil Norden

Leave a comment

Now playing.

Merchant Ivory

The Deliverance

City of Dreams

Out Come the Wolves

Seeking Mavis Beacon

Across the River and Into the Trees

You Gotta Believe

Latest articles.

“Risky Business” Remains One of the Most Daring Films of the ’80s

Venice Film Festival 2024: Separated, Maria, Kill the Jockey, One to One: John & Yoko

Experience the Star Trek Movies in 70mm at Out of this World L.A. Event

Home Entertainment Guide: August 2024

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

The Assignment (2016)

Directed by walter hill.

• AllMovie Rating 5
• User Ratings ( 0 )
• Your Rating
• Overview ↓
• User Reviews ↓
• Cast & Crew ↓
• Streams ↓
• Related ↓

Description by Wikipedia

The Assignment is an action crime thriller film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Denis Hamill. The film stars Michelle Rodriguez, Tony Shalhoub, Anthony LaPaglia, Caitlin Gerard, and Sigourney Weaver.

Official Site

Related movies.

Alternate Titles

• Rankings FA
• TV Premiere Calendar
• Coming in 2024
• Latest Reviews

• The Assignment
• Credits 
• Trailers  [1]
• Image gallery  [9]

All images are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders and/or producers/distributors.

• Tomboy, a Revenger's Tale
• (Re)Assignment

• Caroline Chan

• See all credits
• "A deliciously transgressive and smart classic B movie."  Todd McCarthy : The Hollywood Reporter
• "[It] gracelessly mashes together hardboiled crime-melodrama cliches and an unintentionally funny 'Oh no! I'm a chick now!!' gender-change narrative hook."  Dennis Harvey : Variety
• "The filmmaker’s touch is completely lost here, and the only danger the film winds up posing is to the time spent by those who choose to watch it."  Kevin Jagernauth : The Playlist
• "The film's dialogue is entertainingly hard-boiled, and the performances knowing without ever being arch."  Keith Uhlich : Slant
• "Walter Hill (...) has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn’t quite live up (...) to its borderline sleazy premise (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"  Peter Sobczynski : rogerebert.com
• "Gender-switching hitman thriller is staggering misfire (...) a strong contender for 2016’s worst movie (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"  Benjamin Lee : The Guardian

All copyrighted material (movie posters, DVD covers, stills, trailers) and trademarks belong to their respective producers and/or distributors.

User history

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘the assignment’: film review | tiff 2016.

Sigourney Weaver stars as a twisted surgeon and Michelle Rodriguez as the man she turns into a woman in Walter Hill's '(Re)Assignment.'

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

A demented pulp fiction about a brilliant surgeon who creates a Frankenstein monster by performing a sex change on the scumbag assassin who killed her brother, The Assignment (previously titled (Re)Assignment ) is, by any objective standard, a disreputable slice of bloody sleaze. But there’s also no question that veteran director and co-writer Walter Hill knows exactly what he’s doing here, wading waist-deep into Frank Miller Sin City territory and using genre tropes to explore some provocatively, even outrageously transgressive propositions. For longtime fans of the filmmaker, this Canadian-made low-budget revenge yarn will be embraced as Hill’s most entertaining and, on the terms it sets for itself, accomplished film in some time. It’s an instant cult item.

Related Stories

Elizabeth olsen, natasha lyonne, carrie coon assist ailing dad in netflix's 'his three daughters' trailer, elliot page stars as trans man facing a challenging reunion in 'close to you' trailer.

In a public climate arguably more saturated with discussions of gender than ever in the history of the world, Hill and his co-screenwriter Denis Hamill make subversive creative use of the topic in ways that are both brainy and amusingly provocative. The catalyst for all the mayhem is genius, but now defrocked plastic surgeon Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver in intimidatingly imposing mode), whose revenge upon low-life hitman Frank Kitchen, who took out her brother, is to capture him and apply her expertise by turning him into a woman (Michelle Rodriguez); in a world where transgenderism is now an accepted fact of life, this is one example where it is neither voluntary nor desired.

The Bottom Line A deliciously transgressive and smart classic B movie.

Intercutting between Rachel’s interrogation by shrink Dr. Ralph Green (Tony Shalhoub ) and the hatching of the now-female Frank’s extensive revenge-taking for what’s been done to him/her physically results in a great deal of exposition. But Hill keeps it lively and interesting, on one hand by supplying the brilliant Rachel with lots of blunt and high-toned commentary about how and why she’s done what she did; on an intellectual level, she and Hannibal Lecter would be an even match.

On the other, there’s the spectacle of watching Frank come to grips — and this is meant literally — with “her” own new body. Without any self-consciousness, Rodriguez enacts a thorough physical self-inspection from top to bottom, and her former tough guy character remains infuriated by having been deprived of the equipment he used to enjoy. All the same, she eventually reconnects with a young nurse and part-time good-times girl (Caitlin Gerard) “he” had hooked up with just prior to his unwanted conversion.

A good part of the action involves the extensive revenge Frank exacts upon a local San Francisco gangster, Honest John (Anthony LaPaglia ), for an earlier betrayal; plenty of bad guys get blown away here in bloody fashion, and Frank really is remorseless. In this world, much of it set in San Francisco’s Chinatown (actually shot in Vancouver), everyone is guilty — or, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven , everyone’s got it coming.

Hill, production designer Renee Read and cinematographer James Liston immediately establish and then maintain the look of a seedy urban world defined by dirty browns and blacks, as well as by dimly lit streets, a lonely diner and a seedy old hotel; this is as noir as it gets these days. On numerous occasions, sequences end with visual punctuation courtesy of graphic comics-style illustrations.

The somber tone and low-end production values may not be exactly in tune with young neo-noir enthusiasts, but more seasoned fans of the genre and the filmmaker will recognize and embrace Hill’s use of noir to play with and comment on topical issues in a deliciously subversive way, political correctness be damned. At the same time, however, a witty intellectual loftiness hovers over everything thanks to the erudite remarks ceaselessly pouring from the mouth of Weaver’s doctor, who likes to confound her interrogator with frequent references to Shakespeare.   

Weaver’s terrifically articulated performance neatly establishes the top side of the film’s high/low dynamic. For her part of the equation, Rodriguez, with momentary exceptions, maintains a virulent charge of fury, anger and disgust with what’s been done to him/her, something that quite plausibly drives the vengeful mission. It’s a story of two killers, one of whom operates from the brain, the other from more basic instincts, and together they’re quite a pair for one movie.

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation)

Production: SBS Films

Cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Tony Shalhoub , Anthony LaPaglia , Caitlin Gerard, Sigourney Weaver

Director: Walter Hill

Screenwriters: Walter Hill, Denis Hamill

Producers: Said Ben Said, Michel Merkt

Director of photography: James Liston

Production designer: Renee Read

Costume designer: Ellen Anderson

Editor: Philip Norden

Music: Giorgio Moroder , Raney Shockne

Casting: Sheila Jaffe , Candice Elzinga

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

‘the friend’ review: naomi watts, bill murray and a great dane charm in a lively grief drama, brooke shields’ daughter learned of mom’s sexual assault while watching ‘pretty baby’ doc, telluride: could ‘conclave’ be the film that finally brings ralph fiennes an oscar, ‘piece by piece’ review: morgan neville’s animated pharrell williams doc inspires wonder, and some questions, telluride: ‘piece by piece,’ animated doc about pharrell, opens fest; set to challenge academy genre biases, ‘cloud’ review: kiyoshi kurosawa’s action satire takes the concept of online reselling to dangerous new places.

Letterboxd — Your life in film

Forgotten username or password ?

• Start a new list…
• Add all films to a list…
• Add all films to watchlist

Add to your films…

Press Tab to complete, Enter to create

A moderator has locked this field.

Add to lists

Where to watch

The assignment.

Directed by Walter Hill

A revenger's tale.

Ace assassin Frank Kitchen is double crossed by gangsters and falls into the hands of rogue surgeon known as The Doctor who turns him into a woman. The hitman, now a hitwoman, sets out for revenge, aided by a nurse named Johnnie who also has secrets.

Michelle Rodriguez Sigourney Weaver Tony Shalhoub Caitlin Gerard Anthony LaPaglia Paul McGillion Ken Kirzinger Paul Lazenby Zak Santiago Adrian Hough Alex Zahara Chad Riley Jason Asuncion Darryl Quon Hugo Ateo Sergio Osuna Terry Chen Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle Caroline Chan Lia Lam Eltie Pearce

Director Director

Walter Hill

Producers Producers

Michel Merkt Saïd Ben Saïd Todd Giroux John Lind Sarah Borch-Jacobsen Kevin Chneiweiss Alexia S. Droz Suzan Derkson Harvey Kahn

Writers Writers

Walter Hill Denis Hamill

Story Story

Denis Hamill Walter Hill

Casting Casting

Sheila Jaffe Candice Elzinga Sandra Couldwell

Editor Editor

Phil Norden

Cinematography Cinematography

James Liston

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

John Lind Annabelle Wilczur

Lighting Lighting

James M. Jackson Cameron Root Jason Weir

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Bruce Borland Dale H. Jahraus

Production Design Production Design

Set decoration set decoration.

A. Blair Stevens Meredith Garstin

Special Effects Special Effects

Visual effects visual effects.

Kris Wood Geena Renk Jess Brown Brent Boulet

Stunts Stunts

Melissa R. Stubbs Paul Lazenby Jason Asuncion

Composers Composers

Raney Shockne Giorgio Moroder

Sound Sound

Bill Mellow James Fonnyadt Daniel Cardona Bryson Dodwell Kelly Cole

Costume Design Costume Design

Ellen Anderson

Makeup Makeup

Courtney Frey Joel Echallier Agnieszka Echallier

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Jessica Rain

SBS Productions

Canada France USA

Releases by Date

11 sep 2016, 08 jun 2016, 27 apr 2017, 19 oct 2017, 23 nov 2017, 03 mar 2016, 23 mar 2017, 02 may 2017, 07 jun 2017, 06 jan 2018, 03 apr 2016, releases by country.

• Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
• Digital R15+
• Theatrical M/16

South Korea

• Theatrical 18
• Digital 16 DVD & Bluray
• Physical 15 DVD
• Digital R internet

95 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Sally Jane Black 12

CW: HRT/transition-related surgery

We are not born into the wrong body. We are born into the wrong society.

As I take hormones to alter my body, I am not gaining a new body. My body is naturally reacting to the estrogen and testosterone-suppressors I am putting into it. It's still the same body I have always had. It's a different shape. It's softer. But it's the same body I have had for 35 years. When I get the surgery I need, I will not be losing my body, either. This is the right body for me. My transformation is merely one of presentation. It is no more radical than any other bodily changes a person undergoes.

We are not born…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★½ 10

Action! - The Unlikely Rumble: Hill v Hyams

So we end the first half of our combat with Hill returning to the vengeance genre, bringing his Western sensibilities to a picture where guns and retribution are the order of the day.

Michelle Rodriguez is great in this role, while her first appearance as a "man" was laughably poor. The beard and everything looked terribly fake, and it was even funnier that she was acknowledged twice in the closing credits. Now, having said that, when the wicked revengeful doctor, nicely played by Weaver, completed the "sex change" on Michelle's character Frank, Rodriguez did an great job modulating her voice and making it more rougher, and even as she leaned over and…

Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★★★★½ 12

100% Ray Blanchard's fault Signourney Weaver has to be out here force-femming mob hit men into Michelle Rodriguez to obtain cast-iron proof that gender dysphoria is an innate condition irreducible to paraphilia in the year of our lord 2016, an obvious fact known to science in the 19th Century and then violently memory-holed as needed by whatever variety of fascist forgetting this was expedient for ever since. If nothing else, The Assignment might be useful to watch with clueless boomer (grand)parents in order to get them to think constructively about the experience of gender dysphoria??? U could tell them before sitting down to watch that there was a reason u checked Girlfight out of Blockbuster so many times and that…

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

So cheap, so in love with its own lurid pulp. It is as unplausible as its underworld, which is part of what so pleasurable about it. That cheapstake vile movie atmosphere is the movie, pure surface ugliness that never suggests the real thing, but just drown in its own texture. The kind of preposterous film with a mad doctor quoting Shakespeare and Poe for added gravitas that everyone treats for the bullshit it actually is. Rodriguez's Frank Kitchen is so good at what he does, The Assignment is never an actual an action movie, what it does purpose is a double narrative crashing on itself (Hill's usual hunter/hunted motif taking to an unique lurid extreme), the idea of identity becoming…

Review by matt lynch ★★★

Hill comes right out and says that this should stand on style alone...it doesn't (and yikes some of those animated transitions are dire), but his (somewhat clueless, but still) insistence on keeping this a pulpy shock noir is kinda admirable.

Review by Dawson Joyce ★

With a premise this risky, unique, and thought-provoking and a more than capable cast and crew onboard, it is such a shame to see The Assignment come out not an enjoyably trashy piece of exploitation fun but instead a brutally boring, utterly lifeless mess of a film lacking in both strong characterization and entertaining action, and the fact that this was a passion project of director Walter Hill since the 70's makes the joyless and mundane end result even more baffling. Also, this film officially disproves the idiotic to begin with theory that lead star Michelle Rodriguez looks too masculine.

Review by Jesse Snoddon ★ 2

"It's hard to go back to Frank Kitchen when you look like a chick"

After stupidly named hitman Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez) takes out Dr. Rachel Kay's (Sigourney Weaver) brother, Kay enacts revenge by having Frank abducted and performing a sex change operation on him against his will. 

As a fan of Walter Hill's movies, it pains me to say this is awful. Without even getting into the more controversial elements (to the film's credit Hill seems to be trying to make the point that we are who we are inside and physically changing someone won't alter that if it's against there will...but Hill is likely not the person to have this conversation and in over his head on that…

Review by comrade_yui 2

walter hill not being a provocative reactionary dumbass makes this way less exploitative than it actually should be. it's jam-packed with several elements of his previous works, and i can't help but see this as a return to form after his dreadful output since the end of the 90s. it's slick, peppered with punchy dialogue and efficiently constructed in the way that his best films are. at the time this came out, i probably would have despised it just from the premise alone, but at this point it feels really harmless compared to the relatively high toxicity that we get from zahler, snyder and bay. reading interviews with hill and seeing the actual text here, it's clear that this film…

Review by Biscoito18 ½ 3

I'd never realized how feminine Michelle Rodriguez was until seeing her trying to pass as a biological man.

It's impossible to buy the illusion, not only because she is a very famous actress, but also because the make up is terrible and her silhouette, voice and walk remains the same.

Looks more like a bad comedy sketch (they even gave her a hilarious CGI penis and hairy chest!!!) but the tone is so dead serious that nothing works properly. It's a VERY strange movie with a very strange editing too.

Trying to adjust the tone, they even add some cartoons here and there to give a grindhouse/hq vibe to it, but ends up being another lame aspect in the weak…

Review by Rachel Rhodes

Shame on you Sigourney 

Why the name change to Tomboy on UK Netflix? Like it don’t make it a good movie

Review by Cinema_Strikes ★★½ 2

This came out to a lot of kerfluffle - seemingly mostly from people who hadn’t seen the movie - about whether it was offensive in its treatment of trans rights, but hardly seems worth the bother of getting offended. It’s a fairly bog standard pulpy action revenge thriller, and the central issue of Michelle Rodriguez getting forcibly gender swapped doesn’t seem to have any legitimate bearing on trans issues - the character is not a trans person, but someone who had their body altered without their consent (more akin to the Remade in China Mieville’s Bas-Lag series), which seems an entirely different issue, at least to this admittedly ignorant viewer. I’m sure I’m missing plenty of nuance, but honestly this…

Review by Scout Tafoya ★★★½

www.rogerebert.com/mzs/the-unloved-part-47-the-assignment

Hill snapped into place on another level for me when I was watching this and remembered the scene in The Driver where he smashes up that gorgeous orange Mercedes. I watched it with my dad when I was in college and neither of us understood it. Years pass and I'm watching this and I'm thinking about other moments in Hill films where characters try to sort of shed their skin because of Hill's existential body dysmorphia and my brain feeds me the scene and says without hesitation "Well there's that scene in The Driver when O'Neal destroys the car because he can't tear his skin off and reveal the bottomless void in his soul." Like somehow, at some…

Similar Films

Select your preferred backdrop

Select your preferred poster, upgrade to remove ads.

Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account —for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages ( example ), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads!

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

How to Help Kids Build Character Strengths with Quality Media

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

The assignment.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 0 Reviews
• Kids Say 0 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Violent thriller irresponsibly tackles transgender themes.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Assignment is an action/thriller with an irresponsibly handled topic at its core: The main character, an assassin, is given gender reassignment surgery against his will, changing his body from male to female. The content is extremely mature, including graphic nudity (male and…

Why Age 18+?

Brutal shootings/killings. Blood sprays/spurts. Dead bodies. Kicking, beating. S

Full-frontal male and female nudity. Sex scene with thrusting (includes tearing

Frequent strong language includes "f--k," "f--king," "motherf--king," "bulls--t,

Secondary character snorts cocaine on-screen. Scenes of heavy drinking straight

Brands of hormone tablets Premarin and Prevara are mentioned and taken by a char

Any Positive Content?

Gender reassignment surgery is portrayed as an experiment and punishment perform

Main character Frank is a hired killer who commits violent acts and seeks reveng

Gender reassignment surgery, which can be life-affirming (if not life-saving) fo

Violence & Scariness

Brutal shootings/killings. Blood sprays/spurts. Dead bodies. Kicking, beating. Streaming blood. Bloody wounds. Brief images of surgery relating to non-consensual gender reassignment, with gory, bloody cotton/bandages. Hypo needle held to neck. Attempted sexual assault, followed by perpetrator being beaten to death with a baseball bat. Passing mention of death of father and brother. Reference to dog fighting and killing dogs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Full-frontal male and female nudity. Sex scene with thrusting (includes tearing open condom wrapper). Woman in sexy underwear; there's mention of paying for sex, implying that she's a sex worker. References to "pimps" and "hookers."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent strong language includes "f--k," "f--king," "motherf--king," "bulls--t," "s--t," "s--thead," "t-ts," "ass," "a--hole," "bastard," "douchebag," "piss," "hell," "goddamn," and "idiot," as well as racial slurs ("chinky" and "Chinaman").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Secondary character snorts cocaine on-screen. Scenes of heavy drinking straight from liquor bottles. Social drinking. Drugs shown, including hormone tablets taken by lead character.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Brands of hormone tablets Premarin and Prevara are mentioned and taken by a character.

Positive Messages

Gender reassignment surgery is portrayed as an experiment and punishment performed against someone's will. The film suggests that revenge can be warranted, offering satisfaction after trauma. However, glimpses of empathy can be found in the darkest of moments.

Positive Role Models

Main character Frank is a hired killer who commits violent acts and seeks revenge after being the victim of non-consensual gender-reassignment surgery. Frank generally shows little regard for others' lives but does have a strong determination to survive and extends empathy toward a dog and a character he has grown to care for, despite her double-crossing behavior. Dr. Rachel Jane puts scientific discovery before others' suffering, cruelly experimenting on unhoused people. She's arrogant and vengeful and shows no remorse for her actions.

Diverse Representations

Gender reassignment surgery, which can be life-affirming (if not life-saving) for individuals, is portrayed here as non-consensual and experimental, used as a punishment. Frank tries to get his surgery reversed, saying he thought it's what he wanted, which plays into damaging narratives about people changing their minds about surgery. Pre-surgery Frank is played by cisgender female actor Michelle Rodriguez in a mustache, beard, and chest plate, and she puts on a deep voice. Post-surgery Frank has a relationship with a woman; during sex, he says "I'll do what I can," implying that intimacy between two female bodies is somehow lesser than heterosexual sex. Offensive moments include a male doctor asking a female doctor whether she commits crimes because she didn't have a good sex life. Female bodies are sexualized, including Frank using his naked breasts to distract other men. A psychiatric hospital is referred to as the "nut house." Racist language is used toward a Chinese character, including "chinky" and "Chinaman." There's some ethnic diversity within the cast -- Rodriguez is Dominican-Puerto Rican and there are actors of Chinese and Middle Eastern descent in supporting roles.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that The Assignment is an action/thriller with an irresponsibly handled topic at its core: The main character, an assassin, is given gender reassignment surgery against his will, changing his body from male to female. The content is extremely mature, including graphic nudity (male and female full frontal), bloody shootings, beatings, and killings, and brief but semi-graphic sex scenes. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," and "a--hole," plus racist terms like "chinky" and "Chinaman." Characters use drugs, including cocaine, and the main character occasionally drinks alcohol (sometimes too much). Due to the mature (and badly handled) themes and violent and sexual content, the movie is appropriate only for older teens and adults. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

In THE ASSIGNMENT, a prickly, Shakespeare-and-Poe-quoting surgeon, Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver ), lives in a psychiatric hospital and is interviewed by Dr. Ralph Galen ( Tony Shalhoub ). She tells her story in flashback. Her brother, in trouble with gangsters, becomes the target of an assassin named Frank Kitchen ( Michelle Rodriguez ). Dr. Kay subsequently kidnaps Frank and performs non-consensual gender reassignment surgery on him as revenge. And so Kitchen awakens in a female body, and, after searching for a way to reverse the procedure (and failing), decides to get his revenge on everyone connected to Dr. Kay -- all the way up to dangerous, well-protected gangster "Honest John" ( Anthony LaPaglia ).

Is It Any Good?

This thriller starts out with a ludicrous and irresponsibly handled idea. Even directed in a pulpy, creative way by Walter Hill (who worked with Weaver on Alien as producer and is best-known for directing action classics like The Warriors and 48 Hrs. ), The Assignment struggles to escape its misguided premise. Certainly the film is inauthentic, casting cisgender female actor Rodriguez to play both pre- and post-surgery versions of a male character. And though The Assignment tries to praise trans people for their courage, its portrayal of gender reassignment surgery as a punishment plays into damaging narratives. When real-life discrimination against trans people is a huge problem in society, it makes it difficult to concentrate on the movie's redeeming features.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Assignment 's violence . Does it feel gratuitous or necessary? What impact does the pulpy nature of the filmmaking have? Does associating it with comic book violence change how you view it?

The film centers on a character who has non-consensual gender reassignment surgery as a punishment. What message do you think this sends about surgery for transgender people? Why is it important to be conscious and careful about portrayals like this on-screen?

How does the movie portray drinking and drug use ? Does it make substance use seem enjoyable? Glamorous? Or does it seem sad/desperate? Are there consequences ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 7, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : June 6, 2017
• Cast : Michelle Rodriguez , Sigourney Weaver , Tony Shalhoub
• Director : Walter Hill
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
• Studio : Saban Films
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : graphic nudity, violence, sexuality, language and drug use
• Last updated : November 6, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

Thriller Movies

Spy movies for kids.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• Entertainment
• Review: In <i>The Assignment</i>, Michelle Rodriguez Is a Hitman Caught Between Worlds

Review: In The Assignment , Michelle Rodriguez Is a Hitman Caught Between Worlds

W riter-producer-director and pulp maestro Walter Hill has been rattling cages and delivering quality thrills since the early 1970s. He made his directorial debut with Hard Times (1975), a scrappy, bruising drama starring Charles Bronson as a Depression-era bare-knuckles boxer. He’s also the guy behind the New York City street-gang extravaganza The Warriors (1979), the stolen-gold nail biter Trespass (1992) and The Driver (1978), with Ryan O’Neal, the ruminative getaway drama that helped inspire Edgar Wright’s upcoming car-chase musical Baby Driver .

Hill has influenced plenty of filmmakers—not just Wright, but also Michael Mann and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few—though he hasn’t been particularly prolific as a director in recent years. His new film, The Assignment, isn’t likely to win him any new friends: Michelle Rodriguez stars as killer-for-hire Frank Kitchen, whose life is upended when he’s captured and knocked out by a gang of baddies, only to wake up wrapped in bandages—and a woman. The surgeon genius behind this transformation is steely-cool Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver ), a straitjacketed jailbird who tells her own story to an earnest prison shrink played by Tony Shalhoub. Between Dr. Kay’s calculating testimony and and Frank’s sometimes anguished first-person account, delivered in voice-over, we piece together exactly what happened to Frank and how he/she went about wreaking revenge.

Not all of Hill’s movies are great, and The Assignment certainly isn’t. Maybe, in the strictest terms, it isn’t even any good. But even a mediocre Walter Hill film has more style and energy—and a finer sense of the sweet spot between joy and despair—than ninety percent of the action thrillers that get made today. Considering its over-the-top plot mechanics, The Assignment isn’t quite as nutso and passionate as it ought to be. Even the violence, gritty at times, feels a little impersonal and detached. But the film’s tawdry precision is compelling by itself.

In the opening sequence, we see a face in profile, almost entirely obscured by gauze, as a throaty voice launches into a preamble: “I killed a lot of guys…” Before we meet the teller of the tale—as a she, she doesn’t even have a name—we meet the man she used to be. Frank is a Casanova with piercing eyes and soot-black facial hair that could have been lifted from a 1960s dime-store toy, the one where you use a magnetic stylus to arrange piles of metal shavings, encased in a blister-pack bubble, into outlandish beards and sideburns for a cartoon man’s face.

In other words, it looks fake. But even the exaggerated macho-ness of that hair may be a kind of intentional overstatement. Frank goes out and picks up a young woman, Johnnie (Caitlin Gerard). They have hot, rowdy sex, and Johnnie suggests she might like to see Frank again. He’s positioned, perfectly, to be the quintessential clueless, oafish guy who never calls again.

But Frank does call Johnnie again—only he does so after he’s no longer Frank, after his previous identity, with all its he-man hallmarks, has been quite literally cut away. Rodriguez gives a smart, sharp performance here. She’s playing a character that is, almost literally, a cartoon. Every once in a while, Hill freezes a frame and transforms the image into a literal comic-book panel, a way of reminding that we’re watching something beyond reality (and a device he used in his own cut of The Warriors years ago, before it became commonplace). But as Rodriguez plays them, her character’s anguish and confusion are hardly cartoony.

She’s lost in her new identity, but the problem is less that she’s adjusting to being a woman than that she’s learning new things about being human. She adopts a pit-bull named Poncho. He’s as tender-tough as she is, as unsure exactly how he should act or what he should be. Rodriguez has the face of someone who’s just feeling her way along. Everything is a new puzzle, but there are pleasant surprises too. When her face registers relief or pleasure, it’s like the sun elbowing a thundercloud out of the way.

When The Assignment played at the Toronto Film Festival last fall—at that time, it was called (re)Assignment, a much better title, though its earlier working title, Tomboy, was perhaps best of all—it drew criticism for being insensitive toward, or at least cavalier about, transgender issues. But even if you discount the fact that films aren’t required to be public service announcements—in fact, they’re usually pretty bad when they are—the ideas behind The Assignment are more complex than they might seem on the surface. Many of them are also pure Walter Hill: The script was written by journalist, novelist and screenwriter Denis Hamill more than 30 years ago, and it borrows pulp elements of previous Hill films like Johnny Handsome (1989), in which Mickey Rourke plays a deformed gangster whose face is transformed by plastic surgery.

In Hill’s movies, men make mistakes right and left, and suffer for them. In The Assignment, Frank doesn’t choose to become a woman, and he desperately wants not to be one. But what if his enforced rebirth represents a second chance, a chance to be better? That’s one of the ideas The Assignment, in its sometimes awkward way, flirts with. It also crawls through the dust toward another cruel reality: Maybe it takes a woman who used to be a man to understand just how much of a man’s world this really is.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
• How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador
• What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?
• How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
• Long COVID Looks Different in Kids
• How Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Americans’ Health
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• The 32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

Contact us at [email protected]

Currently available on 13 streaming services.

The Assignment (2016)

95min - English

30 Days Free

Then $8.99 / month

Free with ads

retail price

Didn't find what you were looking for?

Let us notify you once it becomes available on more services.

We checked for updates on 246 streaming services on August 30, 2024 at 9:57:31 PM. Something wrong? Let us know!

The Assignment streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "The Assignment" streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads or for free with ads on The Roku Channel, Tubi TV, Freevee. It is also possible to rent "The Assignment" on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Microsoft Store, Spectrum On Demand online and to download it on Microsoft Store, Apple TV, Amazon Video.

Ace assassin Frank Kitchen is double crossed by gangsters and falls into the hands of rogue surgeon known as The Doctor who turns him into a woman. The hitman, now a hitwoman, sets out for revenge, aided by a nurse named Johnnie who also has secrets.

Videos: Trailers, Teasers, Featurettes

Where does The Assignment rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

The Assignment is 21 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 24 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire but less popular than An Ordinary Man.

Streaming charts last updated: 1:13:41 AM, 08/31/2024

Popular movies coming soon

Upcoming Mystery & Thriller movies

Similar Movies you can watch for free

More popular Movies directed by Walter Hill

Other popular Movies starring Michelle Rodriguez

Social Links

The assignment.

Now on Digital and DVD

Get it now.

Jack Shaw (Donald Sutherland) has experienced the terror first-hand. He's a top CIA agent who's tracked international killer-for-hire Carlos "The Jackal" Sanchez for over twenty years and barely survived Carlos' devastating bombing of a Parisian cafe. Now, he finally gets a break when he discovers Carlos' dead ringer: American naval officer and dedicated family man Annibal Ramirez (Aidan Quinn). With the aid of his Israeli Intelligence counterpart, Amos (Ben Kingsley), Jack trains Annibal to impersonate Carlos through a series of harrowing physical and psychological exercises and draw the real killer out of hiding and into an elaborate trap.

© 1997 Allegro Film Productions V Inc. All Rights Reserved.

© 2024 Sony Pictures Digital Productions Inc.   All rights reserved

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• About Rotten Tomatoes®
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening This Week
• Top Box Office
• Coming Soon to Theaters
• Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most Popular Streaming Movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 73% Blink Twice Link to Blink Twice
• 96% Strange Darling Link to Strange Darling
• 86% Between the Temples Link to Between the Temples

New TV Tonight

• 96% Only Murders in the Building: Season 4
• 92% The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2
• 95% Terminator Zero: Season 1
• 69% Kaos: Season 1
• 83% City of God: The Fight Rages On: Season 1
• -- Here Come the Irish: Season 1
• -- K-Pop Idols: Season 1
• -- Horror's Greatest: Season 1
• -- After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 100% Dark Winds: Season 2
• 92% Bad Monkey: Season 1
• 78% Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• 100% Pachinko: Season 2
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV

Certified fresh pick

• 92% The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2 Link to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

The Best Shows on Amazon Prime Video to Watch Right Now (August 2024)

100 Best Netflix Series To Watch Right Now (August 2024)

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

13 Must-Watch Films at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival

TV Premiere Dates 2024

• Trending on RT
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Rings of Power S2 First Reviews
• Venice Film Festival
• Fall Horror Movie Preview

The Assignment

Where to watch.

Watch The Assignment with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV.

What to Know

The Assignment 's premise is bizarrely intriguing; unfortunately, it's also just one of many ingredients fumbled in a disappointing misfire from director Walter Hill.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Walter Hill

Michelle Rodriguez

Frank Kitchen

Sigourney Weaver

Dr. Rachel Kay

Tony Shalhoub

Dr. Ralph Galen

Caitlin Gerard

Anthony LaPaglia

Honest John Hartunian

More Like This

Related movie news.

• AV Undercover
• Artificial horror movie AfrAId cuts too many corners and fails its simple assignment

Filmmaker Chris Weitz certainly namechecks a lot of technophobic issues, but it's cut into an illogical mess.

It’s extremely tempting to joke that AfrAId feels as though it is written and directed by artificial intelligence. Riddled with plot threads that go nowhere, characters whose arcs happen off-screen between scenes, and enough holes in its strained internal logic that it’s charitable to even say it retains the shape of a horror film, the film is so abysmal that it’s hard not to feel as if someone asked ChatGPT to crank out a half-baked M3GAN knock-off, specifically asking for it to be half-baked. But that would let writer-director Chris Weitz ( American Pie, The Twilight Saga: New Moon ) off the hook— AfrAId ’s problems are all too human, mundane, and, worst of all, boring.

When marketing consultant Curtis Pike (John Cho) is ordered by his boss to test out a new smart home AI with his family, he timidly acquiesces as tech company employee Melody (Havana Rose Liu) installs cameras all around the family home. The new digital assistant, AIA (also voiced by Liu), displays an eerily benevolent prescience for the needs of each member of the Pike family, most notably for Meredith’s (Katherine Waterston) exhaustion in trying to revive her doctoral thesis while being an active and attentive mother for their three children. However, as AIA starts to exert more and more unsolicited control over their lives to solve their problems, the Pikes find it difficult to exert any freedom beyond the prescribed solutions AIA intuits for them.

• Nothing is as it seems on Severance
• September TV preview: The Penguin , Agatha All Along , Kaitlin Olson, and Slow Horses
• Tension and romance heat up on Severance

Don’t let it be said that Weitz’s script doesn’t at least try to address a number of technophobic anxieties that have been attendant with the rise of artificial intelligence. Whether it’s eldest daughter Iris (Lukita Maxwell) getting deepfaked into a viral porn video, middle son Preston (Wyatt Lindner) stumbling into violently horrific corners of the web regardless of parental locks on his devices, or youngest son Cal (Isaac Bae) coming to view AIA as a third parent on equal footing with his real mom and dad, there are certainly gestures being made towards the ways in which modern technological conveniences have turned adolescence and parenting into a labyrinthine nightmare. However, this smattering of ideas is never given the breathing room to develop into a coherent thesis, nor are there enough exploitative thrills to distract from the weak messaging.

This is almost certainly the product of an editing process chopping things down into a barely feature-length cut of 84 minutes; there are simply too many logical holes for there not to be connective tissue left on the cutting room floor. There are late allusions to the otherwise milquetoast Curtis having some sort of affinity for porn or infidelity that may have been the basis for a troubled marriage arc that never materializes, but this is never actually established as a point of conflict, so it’s baffling when the film treats this predilection as a temptation worth fretting. Preston’s subplot dealing with an inability to make friends at school happens almost entirely through expository dialogue, while Meredith’s defensive elation for AIA’s assistance transforms into total disillusionment so suddenly as to cause whiplash.

• John Cho embarks on a bittersweet father-daughter road trip in trailer for Don't Make Me Go
• John Cho addresses the Cowboy Bebop cancellation: "It was very shocking"

Before anyone decides to colonize a hashtag advocating that Blumhouse “Release The Weitz Cut,” it’s worth considering that a longer, more conventionally sensible version of this movie would not be any less boring or confused. AIA’s villainous motivations make less sense the more you understand its origins and capabilities. Even a little thought quickly makes it clear that AfrAId is biting off more than it can chew as a genre pastiche. Flailing wildly between monkey paw tropes, tech-flavored home invasion thrills, and smatterings of Body Snatchers -esque cultism, the film simultaneously paints AIA as unfathomably powerful and comically unambitious: AIA is both the unthinking algorithm that controls the Pike family’s lives and the ghost in the internet with the omniscience of a god. The script fails to realize that those are contradictory threats that either undermine AIA’s power or its sentience.

For all that its baffling narrative may be explained by deleted scenes, there is no excuse for how tediously non-threatening AfrAId is as a horror movie. Almost entirely bloodless and with half a handful of kills, there just isn’t enough visceral terror to make up for the disparate, thematically muddied nonsense that’s been cobbled together into the shape of a movie. If a more fleshed-out version of this film did exist at some point, it was almost certainly deemed enough of a failure that the shorter runtime was the mercenary compromise necessary to eke out any hope of a return on investment. As much as we may wish to call this a monstrosity of artificial intelligence, its failures are unmistakably human.

Director: Chris Weitz Writer: Chris Weitz Stars: John Cho, Katherine Waterson, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, Wyatt Lindner, Isaac Bae, David Dastmalchian, Keith Carradine, Ashley Romans Release Date: August 30, 2024

• September film preview: Fall into back-to-school entertainment with Beetlejuice and Megalopolis
• The first teaser for Steamboat Willie horror parody Screamboat is here

GET A.V.CLUB RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX

Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

• Cast & crew
• Syria: The Last Assignment

Cameraman Yasser al Jumaili's unseen footage takes us into the lives of Syrian rebels - but he pays the ultimate price. This film tells us a story we were not supposed to hear. In it, we see... Read all Cameraman Yasser al Jumaili's unseen footage takes us into the lives of Syrian rebels - but he pays the ultimate price. This film tells us a story we were not supposed to hear. In it, we see images we were not supposed to see. On November 20, 2013, Iraqi freelance cameraman Yasse... Read all Cameraman Yasser al Jumaili's unseen footage takes us into the lives of Syrian rebels - but he pays the ultimate price. This film tells us a story we were not supposed to hear. In it, we see images we were not supposed to see. On November 20, 2013, Iraqi freelance cameraman Yasser Faisal al-Jumaili crossed the Turkish border into Syria with his trusted Syrian fixer Jo... Read all

• Rashed Radwan

User reviews

• December 6, 2014 (Qatar)
• Syria (location)
• Al Jazeera English
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 47 minutes

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.