The Assassin Next Door [DVD]

Wow, how do you follow a review like Mr Chambers? I saw this under its original title of 'Kirot' and it was a multilingual where the characters actually spoke the languages they were meant to, ie it was in English, Russian and Hebrew so subtitles were required. Its a gritty and realistic thriller showing a side of Israeli life that you would never normally see and very believable it is too. A world of white slavery run by the Russian mafia that Olga Kurilenko's character tries to escape by becoming an assassin to buy her freedom. Olga Kurilenko demonstrates once again that she is more than just a beautiful face and equal credit must also go to Israeli actress Ninette Tayeb who plays the oppressed housewife next door who befriends her. Well worth watching this is a film you will probably watch again.

I'm going to be extremely candid from the outset here and admit that the only reason I purchased this DVD was because it had the lovely Olga Kurylenko in it. As the sleeve had a picture of Olga firing a gun on the front cover I thought I was in for an action film no brainer with hopefully Olga doing her thing in lots of skimpy skin tight clothing..I know i'm incredible shallow. As it turns out this is actually more a 'Thelma and Louise' type tale charting a woman's attempts to escape the horrors of domestic violence. It's not a bad film but it does rather come across as being a t.v movie and whilst Olga potrays her role admirably the same can't be said for some of her supporting cast who come across as being very 2 dimensional. I think with better casting and with perhaps tighter more claustraphobic camera work to reflect the cheif protaganists sense of entrapment, this film could have made more of a statement about its subject matter. As it is it's watchable, and not just on account of the fact Olga's in it.

This is not an action movie. There is no assassin for the mafia and a housewife struggling to get free. There are one victim from trafficking and her neighbor and they are through the film hunted, abused, beaten and treated horribly. They are trying to cope but in the end everybody loose.

This is not "Nikita" or anything like that. This film is showing the horror of trafficking. The actors are doing a great job and had the film only been presented in a more truthful way I would have given it four stars. But now I sat down and found myself watching something that I am quite aware of but did not intend to spend a nice evening with. Were they afraid that the film would not sell if they told you the truth about it?

The two ladies are doing an excellent job and the villains are also performing very well. Taken as a social realistic drama there are only two items that I find slightly disturbing. The first one is that you can actually have a gun fight going on inside Israel without any security guards that come running. The country is armed to a level that is quite unbelievable (I have been there several times) and the thought that you can have a gun fight in a bus station all alone is almost science fiction.

The other thing is that the film is in two languages. Hebrew and English. Only the Hebrew gets subtitles but not the English. Considering that the actors quite often mumble and none of them have English as their first language it would have been much better to have subtitles through the whole film. Those of us watching it could at times not hear what they were mumbling about in English.

If you want to see the horrors of trafficking see this film. If you plan for a relaxing evening with an action film, you picked the wrong one.