This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Brilliant and touching

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The Assassin is a very violent and well done swordplay epic. The tone and storytelling are very consistent in this film. Zhang Fengyi, Max Mok, Rosamund Kwan and the rest of the cast did a real good job in bringing this story and world to life. The film has little humor and maintains a cold and bleak tone to show the harsh and unforgiving lives of assassins(and their victims) in Ming Dynasty China. The Assassin looks beautiful, but maintains a gritty tone and style. The fight choreography is not very flashy here, but very effective and at times very brutal. The action is quite savage and the violence gets real graphic with brutal beheadings, disembowelments and other assorted kung fu carnage. There are nods to Japanese samurai films as well as American westerns. Overall, The Assassin is very well done and is a top notch Chinese swordsman movie.

I was impressed of Hong Kong Movies, this film is full of swordplay that will entertain you. Even when the emperor fought with his maidens and he ripped them apart one by one or the torture, when they used a needle to close his eyes and it was hard to watch. This film is great, well the problem is the acting. Max Mok acting was a bit silly but the others were fine. Do you know what bothers me about this movie, is when Rasmond screams like a cat front of his lover. Really, watch it with your family and besides, the movie that were nominated Oscar and Golden are all crap. Even the people have bad taste, don't listen to your grandma or grandpa. You have to choose and don't let anyone stop you. Watch it, its entertaining.

The fighting was dull and unspectacular, the story was likewise rather boring and cliched. The action tries to get by on the sheer force of its violence rather than by exciting, well choreographed sequences. There certainly is a lot of violence, rather graphic in relation to other movies of the genre (many beheadings and dismemberments, and most notably an eye-sewing-shut scene), but it is a VERY poor substitute for good action. I think it's terribly unfortunate that this movie has received full DVD release and The Blade (Dao) (1995) has not, as that movie shared the same form of unnerving violence, but it was much, MUCH better done on every level.

Assassin should be considered another lightweight entry into the dark themed HK swordplay/action genre, like The Blade, Ashes of Time, and the excellent Burning Paradise. The film has a great premise- A country bumpkin and flower lover, Tong Po, falls in love with a girl (Rosamund Kwan) he is not allowed to marry. They try to run away together, but they are captured and he is thrown into a jail where his eyes are sewn shut. Next, his eyes are opened to find himself and some fellow prisoners in a gladiatorial ring where they must kill each other in order to survive, the last man standing gets to live and be trained as an executioner for a power corrupted eunuch. Tong Po wins of course, becomes an adept killing machine, is renamed Tong Chop, and given an apprentice who both idolizes and wants to replace him. During one nighttime raid, Tong sees Rosamund and his past starts creeping back on him, so he leaves the killing business and hides out with her in her village where she has remarried and has a son. But, his old life as a prominent killer is not easily left behind, and both his protégé and the powerful eunuch are out for his blood, leading to the bloody conclusionIt has a great story, pretty good cinematography, and the gore one comes to expect (the eunuch likes to tear his victims in two, and of course the swordplay involves many geysers of blood), but it suffers from poor production values and lack of a charismatic lead. The film has serious `fright wig' syndrome, with some laughable costumes and really bad, uneven, frizzy wigs on Tong Chop and his protégé. With a more substantial budget, design, and casting of a better lead this could have been a great film. It could definitely benefit from being remade.