The action genre and the typical assassin trope go together like marshmallows and hot chocolate. However, Camille Delamarre's Assassin Club pushes this fated pairing by having a group of the top assassins from around the world hunt each other. What follows is a nonstop, chaotic battle royale that's all fists and guns -- but bookmarked by a flimsy story.
Directed by Delamarre, with a script by Thomas C. Dunn, Assassin Club's central protagonist is Morgan Gaines (Henry Golding), an assassin who wants out of the game to make a new life with his partner, Sophie (Daniela Melchior). Caldwell (Sam Neill) ropes him back in for one final mission: take down six targets from around the globe. However, Morgan soon discovers the other people he's contracted to go after are also on his tail. Now, it's a case for survival while uncovering who has put the hit out on them and why.
Assassin Club honors what it promotes on the film poster. While it might not have the precision or outstanding choreography of John Wick, there's an intensity and ferocity to every fight -- along with sharp inventiveness to keep the scenes fresh. Delamarre doesn't try to imitate Hong Kong action cinema or even the traditional American approach, as he borrows more from other French action films, such as Luc Besson's Léon: The Professional and La Femme Nikita. There's an international panache to the fight scenes that doesn't always come across in typical blockbuster fare. It also carries on the good action work that Delamarre brought to his last film -- the drastically underrated The Transporter Refueled.
Credit also goes to Golding as the lead here. Flawlessly, he switches from gunfight to hand-to-hand combat while adapting to the different fighting styles of his on-screen adversaries. This isn't the kind of movie where Golding gets to show his dramatic chops, but he does demonstrate cool chemistry with Neill whenever those two interact. In fact, it would have been more welcome to see more scenes with him and Neill rather than the generic and forced love story between Morgan and Sophie.
To be fair, anyone who watches Assassin Club should expect this to be more Paul W. S. Anderson than Paul Thomas Anderson. The script feels largely secondary to everything else, with the story being about as solid as a toothpick holding up a juggling elephant. The action and sprawling scenery are what keep the viewer glued to the screen here, because the narrative shifts between highly predictive and clumsy at the best of times. The film also meanders and crawls to its 111-minute runtime, which could have had 30 minutes shaved off for better pacing and flow.
Assassin Club isn't about to knock John Wick off his perch, but it is an entertaining, turn-off-the-brain movie in the same vein as other '90s classics like Assassins and Hard Target. If anything, it is proof that Golding can deliver as an action star and should be considered a top contender to be the next James Bond.