Here are review links for this film submitted by our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Il film di Hou Hsiao Hsien richiede allo spettatore un abbandono totale, una disponibilita’ a seguire il suo andamento onirico e le sue interminabili lentezze, che sono nella sala buia acquistano senso.
- David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: The Assassin cannot be reduced to some alternate, arty version of a wuxia movie. It is a wuxia movie in every sense and it is also overwhelmingly artful.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An enchanting cinematic work of art that turns a martial arts drama into a meditation on beauty and empathy.
- Robert Cashill @ Popdose
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: features scene after scene of heart stopping beauty, all set to one of the year’s most inventively evolving scores…It’s all simply glorious.
- Rob Daniel @ Electric Shadows
- Excerpt: Pretty to look at but likely to leave scratched heads and soft snores.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: This is less a narrative than it is a pageant.
- Hugo Gomes @ http://cinematograficamentefalando.blogs.sapo.pt [Portuguese]
- Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Hou purposefully contradicts that programme, lingering on the intense, near-hallucinogenic beauty of this past world, the intricacy of the way it’s bound in with nature, in opposition to the modern world.
- Allyson Johnson @ CambridgeDay.com
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: An assassin with a heart of gold, balancing work vs. love, The Assassin is an opportunity for a certain cinephile sect to relish color-saturated art direction and ignore narrative, because trying to understand any of it is futile.
- Steve Katz @ The Alpha Primitive
- Excerpt: The Assassin finds its worth in cinema as high art, and while the story may not match up to the dizzying heights of its visuals (this film is truly the most gorgeous film of the year to this point), the mastery of that visual poetry is more than worth the price of admission.
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite my constantly feeling at arm’s length with the story, I couldn’t stop myself from being enveloped by Hou and cinematographer Ping Bin Lee’s sumptuous composition. At first watching events through a translucent silk curtain can be annoying, but it soon proves an amazing aesthetic choice with fabric layers losing opacity until Yinniang’s silhouette becomes unobstructed between two hemmed frames.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The pace can appear glacially slow, but within it things are constantly happening. Hou wraps action in stillness, and infuses stillness with movement.
- [New – 1/28/16] | Thomas Spurlin @ DVDTalk.com
