User reviews

When I sat down in 2021 to watch the 2015 movie "Terms & Conditions" (aka "Assassin's Game"), it was because the movie had Bai Ling and Vivica A. Fox on the cast list. However, both of them were not really all that much part of the movie.

Instead I was treated to a dubious action movie starring Mark Mikita, whom I have no idea who is and also have Tom Sizemore as the main bad guy. Yeah, it wasn't exactly top of the line material here.

The storyline in "Terms & Conditions" was simple. Actually it was so simple to the point of the movie being a mundane and pointless one actually. Can't really say that that writer was delivering super great material for the actors and actresses to work with. And director Anoop Rangi didn't really deliver an outstanding movie.

And the characters in the movie were one-dimensional, flaccid muppets milling about without offering much of any personalities, backstories, and the like. And they were portrayed with a lack of conviction and gusto.

Yeah, the writing for this movie was just altogether poor and fairly bad.

While I managed to sit through the entire movie, I wasn't really entertained by the movie. And if you enjoy action movies, this is hardly a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Some of us did so you don't have to.

My rating of "Terms & Conditions" settles on a mere three out of ten stars. It was a random and pointless action movie at best. If you enjoy action movies, then there are far better movies out there.

1-10, eh? Is a minus rating possible here?

I always try to keep an open mind when viewing a new film, even if going in I know it's going to be somewhere below the bottom of the barrel.

OK . . . I'll confess, my only motivation for even attempting to endure this trainwreck in the making was to watch Bai Ling do her thing.

I LOVE Bai Ling, she is such an unusually interesting character (and amazingly beautiful). Even if she is just running around blasting away with a giant machinegun . . . in stiletto heels . . . I mean really, how can anyone beat that???

As for the aforementioned trainwreck (oops, I meant film production), one would have to search far and wide, throughout the annals of film history to come up with anything that even remotely approaches this level of attempted filmcraft at its absolute worst.

Oh, but wait . . . there IS just such an example. For anyone who may be familiar, that unique distinction has, for decades, been the supreme domain of "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Yup, that has traditionally been the extreme milestone of filmcraft at its lowest possible ebb (and believe me, I've seen more than my share of contenders for this dubious distinction).

But, as is inevitable, even the lowest of the low must fall from their 15 femto seconds of infamy, and let the new contender take the title. And that fabulous moment of infamy goes to . . . (drum roll, please) . . .

Assassin's Game!

So, get an adult beverage (or whatever your pleasure might be), gather a few comrades, and get ready for perhaps the most spectacular example of unintended comedy to violate a screen in recent memory.

As for Bai Ling . . .

You are beautiful, a rare joy and very fun to watch.

I don't know who talked you into this film fiasco (maybe you should be looking for a new agent . . . just sayin').

But no worries. You have had much better material in the past, and no doubt will in the future.

When a movie doesn't promote or market its lead character and instead relies on advertising the three more popular co-stars instead, one has to begin wondering whether the movie is really any good. It isn't. Mark Mikita, known more as a stuntman, gets the lead role as Vet Jones, a supposedly top flight assassin in his second acting role of his career. While the titillating opening credit scenes capture the attention of the male audience with its sensuality, the subsequent immediate ambush scene is a let down. Instead of Clear and Present Danger (1994) and its the Colombian ambush scene where FBI Director Emil Jacobs is killed having the sustained intensity and credibility that makes for a truly powerful experience, the initial ambush in Assassin's Game comes across as sporadic and suspect in its brief depiction and over too soon resolution. The initial heavy use of rock music seems to either reflect an attempt to portray toughness and power or some cute form of directorial display of creative ability, but it comes across more as a compensatory technique to salvage the hollowness of the dramatic slow-motion of the cinematography. Instead the over-reliance on the extended slow-motion photography and rock music begins to actually drag the movie and becomes more of time filler than an interesting integral part of the action or plot.

Tom Sizemore get the unenvious role of attempting to play the tough guy with a call for a lot of shouting under the direction of Anoop Rangi in his second movie credit. Considering Sizeman is a solid actor, his overly dramatic and two-dimensional performance is most likely attributable to the director and the script. The assassin team itself seems to be composed of pretty sad and overly incompetent and unconvincing assassins. It's apparent the director Rangi tries to incorporate some nice touches but with mixed success. The phone call early in the movie where Vet doesn't speak a word is intriguing, yet underdeveloped. The backstory underlying the relationship and the emotional ties between the characters and their motivation is lacking making the movie seem overly simple and again two-dimensional. The movie lacks convincing intellectual depth.

There's a potentially interesting twist a little ways into the movie, but the bare script leaves too much out and makes for an unconvincing, hard to accept plot twist. Too much of Vet's decisions don't offer up any reasons behind them, making the script seem to be a mishmash of ideas and directions that don't seem to allow the audience to get behind. There's even a suggestion of Vet having an outdated sexual bias. And Mikita's acting performance comes across wooden without a lot of personality even for a professional assassin. One of the few strengths and a critical one as this is an action movie, many scenes involving the stuntman-actor Mark Mikita where he gets to display exciting and some sharp, biting martial art moves. Even his nice fighting skills later in the movie however eventually become boringly stale and mundane when they become the main feature for their own sake instead of being a fascinating contribution to the movie. Contrast Vet's dull performance to the much better choreographic and articulated combat presentation by Rupert Friend as Agent 47 in Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) or Keanu Reeve's intense portrayal in John Wick (2014).

Eventually, there's an odd question that arises about why there is this particular assassin team in the movie in the first place and one can speculate that this its rather illogical inclusion is just a plot device that was written into the script that was supposed to make this movie different and more appealing which now seems rather suspect. It also remains a question about what Vet meant when he says, "Get it done." The audience and probably even the characters themselves don't know what he's talking about. And who is this important "target" anyway?

The talents of Vivica J. Fox seem wasted as a befuddled, scared target in contrast to her more pleasant and powerful assassin role in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003). Even Bai Ling, the Asian martial arts superstar doesn't get much of a persona of interest in contrast to the highly under-rated movie and great underplayed performance of Lucy Liu in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002). There is an oddly and seemingly random flashback in the first half of the movie that attempts to provide a little emotional depth to both Fox and Bai Ling's characters, but it just seems ill-placed with a sense of discontinuity without helping to really fill in more substantive details of the story. Then suddenly, even though it was telegraphed a little earlier, other characters seem to come from nowhere and a gun battle ensues. It just seems a bit confusing with too many story lines going on along with all the fighting including even a psycho-babble scene. The separate fight scenes seem to be too conveniently coordinated and tied up together by time they are done making for a somewhat artificial sense to the plot and paint by the numbers. In reality, Bai Ling's character, no matter how good she is, is forced in the movie to be over-matched by sheer numbers and having to unreasonably multi-task in taking on two parallel topical narratives in one gun battle onslaught that just doesn't ring true. Eventually her character also seems destined to be thrown into the garbage heap for her contribution to the movie. Fox's character is sorely left without much to do and seems wasted in this movie. It's actually painful to see her have to suffer with her non-performance.

When it comes to some of the gun battles, the shots seem so conveniently poorly aimed for assassins. There just seems not enough professionalism in these scenes and instead there is a focus on the usual standard gun battle fare often seen on television. Then there are gun scenes and even unbelievable hand to hand combat scenes that seem to ignore the practicality of using guns to get the job done which it seems to have been completely forgotten in one scene. Evil characters just to come from nowhere, unexpectedly for no reason except to just to add to the film's length and maybe to show off, but really become excruciatingly tedious while the meantime as well as the former team of assassins seemingly waste their time with badly edited relational disputes between assassins who also make foolish decisions.

For the most of the movie, the audience is left mostly in the dark was to what is actually going on and why the characters are doing what they are doing. Overall, this movie is uneven, unbalanced, with poor editing and inconsistent emotional tone as well as mish mashed together with a storyline that flops over into a lot of meandering and dumb dialogue in places (worrying about burying a body while a mysterious bad guy is still on the loose) and wild bewildering thinking that is supposed to emotionally impress the audience but doesn't. What this amounts to is a movie that is difficult to watch and upsetting in its apparent idiotic presentation at times, a movie that actually pushes its audience away from wanting to watch it with its inane plot devices and mean-spirited or bumbling characters that one really ends up not liking. It borders on actually becoming one of a remarkably few movies that almost justifies a "negative" number or star except the victim Fox who oddly enough seems to have the least to do in the movie.

Few people have reviewed this film, and those reviews have for the most part been bad. Yes, it has no plot worthy of the name, the script could be better, and in places it is ludicrous. Having said that, there are far worse films made on bigger budgets. Mark MIkita who plays the assassin dragged out of retirement is the real deal. He is a long time martial arts instructor, and whatever his acting skills, it is surprising this appears to be only his third full length film. The action may seem comic book at times, but so did Bruce Lee's until you realised some of his moves were actually slowed down for the camera.