Assassination Games [DVD]

Brazil (Jean Claude van Damme - JCVD) is a veteran hitman who will take any contract for the right price. He is tasked with killing Polo - a well connected drug dealer on Interpol's watch-list. When Roland Flint (Scott Adkins - The Bourne Ultimatum) another highly-successful hitman who is retired learns of the contract on Polo, he decides he wants vengeance for what Polo did to his wife. Two killers - one contract, one in it for the money the other for revenge, who will get to Polo first?

Assassination Games is a well-filmed, high-tension affair. There are some serious shoot-outs and cool hand-to-hand action sequences set in Budapest, Romania. The Eastern-Bloc milieu suits the film well, with Brazil's run-down cover flat being quite the secret-lair. The involvement of corrupt Interpol agents trying to clean house was a noble attempt at adding an extra layer of story but is just so two-dimensional it falls pretty flat and is damn-near a straight rip-off of The Bourne Trilogy.

Neither Adkins or Van Damme get to show off their martial arts and it seems the main problem of this film is just how much potential it has doesn't marry up with what's delivered. It's not a bad film per se, it just seems that the script was written by after a booze-fuelled night in the pub; there just seems to be no main bad-guy, the Interpol agents are completely inept whilst Polo is just a womanising thug - hardly a worthy adversary for two high-end assassins. I felt that the film could of been A LOT better but had it's hands tied by a flimsy script. I mean, did EVERY fight scene have to be prematurely ended by a gun? I wanted to watch JCVD & Adkins martial-art the paste out of someone!!

Extra content: All you get is eight deleted scenes, which were obviously cut early on in the editing as they don't have finished special effects or a final soundtrack - not really worth anything.

All in all a solid hitman film with the great JCVD but could of been a lot better. Nonetheless, worth a watch!!

Looked forward to this as a long term Van Damme fan and have been VERY impressed by Scott Adkins in the few films he has done. Assasination Games - Well theres not that much action - a few brief fights, some gunfights and a pretty good torture scene nthrown in. Nothing on the scale of Undisputed 2/3 or Universal Soldier Regeneration. However the story and characters are well rounded and the film has a dark atmosphere that makes this moody and dark. The days of cheesy Van Damme are over, the darker, deeper Van Damme is here and works well, especially now he is older and has more lines on his face. Adkins is also currently overlooked in the action hero stakes at the moment although his role is less martial arts based than he usually does (see Undisputed 2 & 3 and Ninja), he still plays it well. Production values are also better than most straight to DVD releases. Overall I enjoyed it and cannot wait to see both in Universal Soldier A New Dimension and Expendables 2 next year. 7/10

Ok I admit to being a fan of jcvd but this is just too much. A few years back this film was originally meant to star jcvd and seagal together. Seagal, for whatever reason was smart enough to find something better to do.

This film is pants. Jcvd and Atkins play rival hitmen who come together to dispose of the bads guys. Atkins has a personal reason for wanting revenge, jcvd is just doing it for the money. Not exciting, drab action and the acting is dire. However the film does have some (unintentional) comedy. Jcvd lives in a run down housing block, in a drab apartment. But no!!! Turn on the cold tap in the bathroom and you can step into his secret lair. Here he listens to classical music, admires fine art whilst relaxing with his collection of guns. So bad I'm not making this up!

The only female role of note in the film is a prostitute, who jcvd helps from an abusive boyfriend (glad they avoided reverting to stereotype). It also sets the alarm bells off when two of the main bad guys consist of a reject from eastenders or some other rubbish soap opera and jcvd's real life son. Save your money and wait for channel 5 to show it.