Assassination Tango

  

Directed and written by Robert Duvall

Starring Robert Duvall, Rubén Blades, Kathy Baker, Luciana Pedraza

 

Rated R for language and some violence.

Runtime: 114 minutes

 

In his latest movie, “Assassination Tango,” Robert Duvall does it all: directs, writes, produces and stars.  That’s not a bad thing, since Duvall is talented enough to pull it off, and if you like Duvall, you’ll like this movie.

 

I’m reminded of the years of torture that actors go through, the dedication and sacrifice that is usually demanded in return for even modest success on the screen.  Duvall has paid his dues and is arguably at the top of his form.  He is apparently living the impossible dream of growing old gracefully on screen and, at 72, has still not had to make a stinker like “Grumpy Old Men” to get a box office.  Nor has he had to make a movie about retirement (yes, that one’s for you, Jack...).

 

But the R word does sneak into “Tango,” there are implications of another one of those “just one last time” adventures before John Anderson, mafia hit man, goes home to his Brooklyn girlfriend, Maggie (Kathy Baker) and her daughter, Jenny (Katherine Micheaux Miller).  True, the assassin Anderson is getting ready to retire, but the movie is much more about his questioning life’s meaning than it is about quitting work.  He flies to Argentina for his final job, but the hit is delayed.  His targeted general has fallen off his horse and will be unavailable for offing for three weeks.  Is this an unconscious nod to Duvall’s own experiences falling off horses (he did that once, too, and broke three ribs in the process)?  So why doesn’t he just go to the hospital and kill the guy?  Well, because that’s not the way Robert wrote it, that’s why.  Just sit tight and listen.

 

Anderson is furious at missing “adopted” daughter’s birthday, and not furious in a clichéd Hollywood way.  He is screaming, kicking, swearing, talking to himself furious.  Honestly, he looks like he’s going to have a coronary, kicking a pay phone the way Sonny laid into his wife-beating brother in-law in the original “Godfather” (Duvall played Tom Hagen, Don Corleone’s lawyer).  Or the way Duvall laid into his congregation in “The Apostle.”  That’s the way I want to be at 72, going out kicking and screaming, not driving a Winnebago like Jack Nicholson (now, Ron, be nice...).

 

So Duvall is playing the hit man in Argentina, and doing a pretty good job of it, considering he doesn’t speak Spanish and he’s trying to kill a former military man with plenty of powerful buddies.  And he’s stuck in the country for three weeks and happens into a dance lounge where, naturally, people are doing the tango.  And, boy, are they doing the tango, at its steaming, seething best.  The floorboards are buckling from the heat.  Anderson is enthralled by the dance, so much so that he strikes up a conversation with a group of the attractive female ones and eventually becomes involved.

 

OK, it’s a thin plot, but Duvall pulls it off.  His cohort in this effort is his current paramour, Luciana Pedraza, playing the part of the dancer Manuela.  Luciana is a beautiful woman, and there is definitely chemistry between the two.  When I saw the movie, I didn’t know they were an off-stage item, and I definitely didn’t know Pedraza from Eve.  But the two pulled off some very sweet scenes.  He must have had to coach her intensively, because she comes off as such a girl-next-door, barely able to act like a professional, but none-the-less sweet.  I guess at some point everyone is bound to ask just how far he can push his fame, bringing his love interest on-stage as co-star in what might be her first movie.  Her dancing certainly helps.

 

There have certainly been a plethora of flicks either directly or indirectly about the tango, but few mix the tango into an aura of violence as effectively as this one.  Anderson the hit-man is cruel and ruthless in his mission; military in his dedication.  But what really makes the movie is when he starts talking to himself; going over his options and his orders like the fire-and-brimstone preacher Sonny in “Apostle.”  Whether by virtue of his personality, his roles, or his ancestry (he is a direct descendent of Robert E. Lee), Duvall has a gift for mixing the military and the metaphysical.  In “Apostle” he plays a preacher with an undercurrent of violence, in this movie he’s a mobster who falls under the spell of artistic expression and finds a side of himself that has been long-lost.  A side that cares for his fellow human-beings.  There’s a right of passage here for Anderson, just as there was for Sonny.

 

Considering this mixture of themes, of all the tango movies out there, the tango movie that reminds me most of this movie is actually “The Scent of a Woman,” (1992); which is not supposed to be about either the military or the tango, but it still includes both the beauty of dance and the horror of war.  Al Pacino plays a retired military commando, blinded by his own drunken game involving a live grenade and living out the rest of his life in muscle-spasms of barely repressed rage.  Visiting a nightclub on a whim, the blind Pacino asks a woman to dance and the most amazing performance ensues.  It is during the dance that we see that the man who has been driven insane with anger is actually crying out for a way to express his other side.  The same other side that Anderson finds in the Argentinean tango.

 

Rubén Blades plays the part of Miguel; one of Anderson’s assigned henchmen in Argentina.  But since Anderson rejects virtually all help that is offered, Blades doesn’t get much screen time.  Kathy Baker is similarly shuffled off to a minor supporting role as Anderson’s significant other back home (New York City).  If you see this movie, you will see plenty of Duvall, a lot of Luciana Pedraza, and not too much of anyone else.  The dance scenes are great, as is the music selection.  Duvall has written musical scores for some of his past movies and can claim music as a talent as well as acting.  The movie can be criticized as slow, and the meandering screenplay matches the lack of action.  It’s no “Mission Impossible.”  But if you want a dream in dance clothing and some great acting by Robert Duvall, see “Assassination Tango.”