★★★☆☆

The Assassin Next Door is a bit of a remake of Stiletto staring Stana Katic. This version stars Olga Kurylenko as the woman who escapes a brothel to become an assassin. Some day I will actually find an English language version of Stiletto so I can watch more than a third of it. Stiletto wasn’t poorly done, it was just in a language I don’t understand and action flicks don’t make reading subtitles easy.

For women of foreign language descent/background who can appear smoking hot, this B-grade script is a major career launcher. Before women paint me too harshly as a pig, “smoking hot” isn’t just about the body. It’s about working at it and the attitude. Of course, you actually have to be able to act while killing a lot of bad guys. There are a lot of women with bodies that can cause traffic accidents all over town that aren’t smoking hot. You have to both own it and sell it.

Some day Ubuntu will add the Unicode half star to their font so I can give movies half stars. This wasn’t quite four stars, but it deserved 3.5.

Launching

The Stiletto version of this tale launched Stana Katic’s career. Yes, she had some television appearances before it, but after it she became a Bond girl, got into The Librarian III. Yes, she did other things, but Castle had an amazingly long run.

Almost the reverse for Olga. Both she and Stana were in Quantum of Solace in 2008. Then she did this this movie, Centurion, Vampire Academy, and much more. No, I didn’t bring up Stana Katic just to bring her up, these women have crisscrossing careers or at least did around 2008.

The Assassin Next Door – Mostly English

I held out little hope when the movie started out in a foreign language with subtitles. No matter how good the violence and how hot the women, I just can’t do subtitles with an action flick. Those work well on movies paced slower than an English Lit final exam, not so well when you are trying to follow the action.

Thankfully they drop into English quite a bit.

In fact, they make a point of speaking other languages later in the flick. If you want to learn how to say “Go F*&^ yourself” in three different languages, there is one sequence that would be highly educational. Yes, they had a few other swear words, but that will probably be your most useful phrase.

Summary

I’m not going to tell you the plot or main story line. This film does an excellent job of slow rolling the background of Olga’s character. You eventually learn how she ended up in a brothel, why she has no real emotion killing men, and refuses to kill women/children. I will tell you this much.

No matter how evil you are, you have to do one good selfless thing before you die.

For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.