Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you.
~ Crandell Addington
There is always two sides to everything, yin and yang, darkness and light, good films and bad. Assassin X aka The Chemist is bad, BADASS that is.
Rule #4 Always let them see you coming, cross their guard and get closer to the target.
Casting for Assassin X is well done. The story line and script are good and the fight choreography in Assassin X is superb.
Olivier Gruner was the perfect choice for the role of Ronus Steele. Gruner is a military man and a martial artist, but he is also sensitive and has an irresistible accent. Gruner’s character, Ronus, is an assassin, and he is serious and logical about what he does. He “eliminates” the “bad” guys with great composure and absence of ego. All of this makes Ronus compelling, and, like him or not, you are guaranteed to admire his fighting skills.
Olivier Gruner is the Samurai opposite the Ninja rogue, Blaine, who is a narcissistic “a**h***”, always out of control, and without redeeming value. Blaine is played well by Steven Dell.
Nina Bergman is beautiful, tough, and edgy and gives her role as Trinidad the perfect combination of spoiled kid and sexy psychopath. She is a star on this silver screen and will be in many a nocturnal dream.
Patrick Kilpatrick is an actor whose roles often have a very sinister undercurrent. He brings this undercurrent into his role as Claxton in Assassin X with great finesse, subtly manipulating everyone who works for him. He is the man in charge, until he isn’t.
Sit, sit . . . nothing like a clean shave. Make you feel like a new man. Jose, let me do this one will you. Don’t you love the sound of a clean swipe . . .
It takes only a few photographs to tell Frank Castle’s story, played by Martin Kove. The entire plot of Assassin X is shadowed in a few of Frank’s photos. Kove plays, to perfection, the role of Frank, the weary military man who was once a leader, but is now resigned to his fate.
If it was anybody else who had to do this I wouldn’t want it. Time. Thanks for making it easy. See you on the other side.
College student, Gabriela Dresden, played by Stephanie Gerard, has just the right amount of charm and innocent sex appeal. She comes on the scene with the top of her soft breasts peeking out of her white school-girl blouse and with lips that scream kiss me. She has beautiful eyes and bats her lashes like an expert. Her golden hair, with the perfect curl, blends in with the scene. She flashes a smile you can’t help but drown in, and follows up with her irresistible accent. She is so sweet and disarming that she can say, “Okay, Ronus Steele, spill it out . . .” and the man wants to share his entire life story. Together the two are like high school kids falling in love and the audience wants to fall in love along with them.
“I’ve always been attracted to the darker side of characters” Marshal Hilton, who plays Vitali, has been quoted as saying. In Assassin X, he plays an controlling family man with a darker side. Tom Renner, who produced the film along with Al Bravo and other tremendous people, plays a seriously menacing individual in the role of Riskin.
Art Camacho developed the story-line for Assassin X aka The Chemist and James Dean Simington wrote the screenplay. It is not altogether a new story, but the way it unfolds keeps the audience in heightened suspense and when we are finally made privy to our lead characters thoughts, we are wrapped in an “Everyman” moment.
Yet He was merciful and forgave their sins and did not destroy them all. Many times He held back His anger and did not unleash His fury! Psalm 78:38
. . . I thought a lot about the [first] guy I eliminated.”
“Killed. . . .
“He murdered five innocent people . . .”
“Oh so you’re God. You pass judgement?”
“No, I’m not God, God works too slow for me.”
Alfred Hitchcock, once said that, ‘drama is life with the dull bits cut out’.
Assassin X is very fast paced, often using Cross-cutting to allow the audience to be privy to more than one scene at a time.
The introduction of the beautiful and deadly art of Wing Chun was clever and the Wing Chun scenes with Grandmaster Eric Lee and Grandmaster Samuel Kwok are gorgeous examples of old school traditional Wing Chun.
We have to mention JoJo Garza of Los Lonely Boys who has a cameo as a mercenary. Anyone who knows JoJo, knows he’s a love, maybe that is why he doesn’t break actor Jon Miguel’s neck instantaneously. Another actor who never ceases smiling in real life is Mark Goldman. He plays Goldy, a convincingly tough nightclub owner who has to deal with the dark side of Giordano, played by veteran actor Thomas Ryan, known for his roles in hundreds of television shows including Elementary, Law and Order, 24.
Throughout Assassin X we see glimpses of Ronus Steel’s anguished loss, giving some understanding of what drives him.
Nina Bergman is BIGGER than life in Assassin , and steals every scene she is in. Maybe its all the close up shots. Both the director and the camera like this lady. In fact, both female leads in The Chemist, Stephanie Gerard and Nina Bergman, are intelligent, fascinating women who command the screen, absorbing everything and everyone around them.
We all tend to pick up on the little things in films that suspend our belief. There are a few scenes in Assassin X that do that, but the scenes that follow bring the audience back in, and the fight scenes are so well choreographed, directed, performed, and edited that everything else is forgotten. Art Camacho is the fight choreographer’s choreographer, and Stunt Coordinator, Mario Rocha, is not only skilled, but very patient, working to get it right. It didn’t hurt the film having Brazilian mixed martial artist, Fabiano Iha, who’s choreography included the awesome fight scenes between Ronus and Blaine and Gabriela and Trinidad, and other really fine martial artists like Rigan Machado and Ted Alderman working on the film.
All the fight scenes in Assassin X are will paced, have great rhythm or lack there of, and color and the music intensifies the techniques. The fight scenes alone, with so many well known martial artists, are worth the price of a ticket.
Assassin X includes music from both its female leads, Stephanie Gerard and Nina Bergman, as well as Rule the World, one of Director Art Camacho’s favorite songs, by Los Lonely Boys along with a few other great songs from this fantastic band.
Life can be so unpredictable. One minute you meet the girl of your dreams. The next you ask yourself, how the hell did I get into this position in the first place. I was always the guy on the other side. Ronus Steele
Assassin is smoldering, with duplicity, intrigue and action to die for! Director Art Camacho and Cinematographer Carmen Cabana hit the target “center mass” with this one.
Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go. ~ Hermann Hesse
