MY DEAREST ASSASSIN Review: Blood, Romance, and Heroes

More blood than you knew existed in all the world.

My Dearest Assassin
Now streaming on Netflix.

Thinking, by its title alone, that I was sitting down to sample a romantic comedy or drama, the opening scene quickly disabused me of that mistaken notion.

Directed with brusque efficiency and an excess of montages by Taweewat Wantha (last year's entertaining horror flick Attack 13), a powerful crime lord is introduced with a rare blood type and an insatiable need for blood transfusions, even if it drains the life out of his unwilling donor. In need of a replacement pronto, a vicious hunter (defined as a vicious independent criminal) is dispatched to Vietnam to "recruit" a new donor in the form of a young girl; the hunter's disposition is defined by how quickly he and his men murder the girl's parents.

Rescued from the hunter by members of a rival group known as House 89, the girl, named Lhan, spends several years in the house of assassins, with the similar-aged Pran, son of the leader of House 89, assigned to protect her. Pran trains his similar-aged friend, the orphaned M, in the art and savagery needed for House 89's criminal activity, while both wait eagerly to start work. Lhan, meanwhile, waits and waits and waits, without ever being told why she is being kept in House 89's warehouse headquarters, never allowed to step foot outside, allowing her to slowly fall in love with her captor(s).

On the outside, the vicious hunter is ordered to find someone else who has the rare blood type required, before he is eventually ordered to find who took Lhan and bring her back to Thailand so the powerful crime lord can drain her of her blood whenever he needs to do so.

The film soon forgets about the powerful crime lord, instead getting distracted by the developing relationship between Lhan and Pran. The raison d'etre of My Dearest Assassin, however, are the deliriously overamped action sequences, in which blood spurts with poetic grace and bones are broken with disturbing frequency. Even more alarming, though, is how often explosives are detonated, leading to a wide range of fires consuming people and materials.

At its core, though, My Dearest Assassin is a melodrama in the spirit of Hong Kong's 'heroic bloodshed' movies, especially in the late 80s and early 90s. The trio of Lhan, Pran, and M are tested as to their fitness over and over again, often with twists that are surprising only if you've never seen a 'heroic bloodshed' movie before.

The multiple montages and unneeded relationship issues balloon the running time to 127 minutes, but you know what they say: you can never have too much blood, too many gun battles or too many villains rising from the dead for a satisfying movie.

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