The Assassin
Well Go USA Entertainment | Release Date: October 16, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Film StageZhuo-Ning SuJun 14, 2016
Unhurried, mood-driven, pregnant with a transcendent reflection on life and death, The Assassin is a singular vision realized with absolute mastery of style and a lightness of touch that’s to die for. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenOct 16, 2015
Combining Hou's patient, observant style with a historical martial arts tale, the film is a fascinating hybrid of craft, genre and story. Beautiful to look at and with deeply felt emotions, the film has a meditative aura punctured by sharp bouts of fighting. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekOct 13, 2015
Hou uses very few close-ups here, preferring to tell his story mostly through movement: combat, dance, the act of passing through a landscape of satiny green firs or silvery birch trees and just watching. Shu conveys complicated feelings — longing, regret, anxiety — with little more than the tilt of her chin or the set of her shoulders. Read full review
100
Screen DailyAllan HunterMay 24, 2015
This is not a venture into wire-work and acrobatics but a contemplative, often ravishing-looking, immersion in the complex politics, power struggles and personalities of the Tang Dynasty as seen through the moral dilemmas facing an enigmatic trained assassin. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 24, 2015
Silk curtains flutter and fall, candles glow, fires crackle softly in the grate. Every scene, every shot, has been composed with total, Kubrickian precision, and calibrated for maximum, breath-quickening impact. Read full review
100
VarietyJustin ChangMay 24, 2015
A mesmerizing slow burn of a martial-arts movie that boldly merges stasis and kinesis, turns momentum into abstraction, and achieves breathtaking new heights of compositional elegance: Shot for shot, it’s perhaps the most ravishingly beautiful film Hou has ever made, and certainly one of his most deeply transporting. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungMay 24, 2015
Its bursts of lightning-fast swordplay interrupt long, still stretches of misty moonlit landscapes and follow a pure literary style more than current genre expectations. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyOct 14, 2015
Enigmatic and often mesmerizing, super-saturated with color, drawn like a still plain ripped by brief, unexpected gusts of wind—The Assassin is one of the most flat-out beautiful movies of the last decade, and also one of the most puzzling. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 24, 2015
It isn't really about the people as much as about the pictures, and for once that does not seem to be a trade off that compromises the power of the resulting film at all. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 15, 2015
I also know The Assassin to be so ravishingly lovely that tracking the plot is far less important than luxuriating in the images. Read full review
88
Washington PostMark JenkinsOct 29, 2015
This mesmerizingly beautiful drama ponders themes of duty, patience, isolation and compassion. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiOct 16, 2015
Conventional and easy-to-follow narratives can be found anywhere, but very few of them occur in films that are as visually ravishing and formally graceful as what Hou has cooked up here. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoSep 18, 2015
The film carves out a rich emotional sphere concomitant to its stunning production design, finding delicate poetry in the dispassionate pursuit of revenge. Read full review
85
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeOct 20, 2015
Hou’s brand of reserve might not be for all audiences, but arthouse admirers of cinematic stillness will find themselves enraptured by this hypnotic tale. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanOct 23, 2015
Political machinations, emotional revelations, and a few well-choreographed fight scenes ensue, but Hou focuses less on the satisfactions of plot and action than on crafting, if not quite bringing to life, his auteurist vision of the past (both historical and cinematic). Read full review
80
EmpireKim NewmanJan 18, 2016
It might also be the case that the film is more taken by emotions, beauty and passing fancies than plot and character. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 24, 2015
The Assassin is a beautiful, beguiling film; it's impossible not to get fully lost in its rarefied world. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 24, 2015
The movie is a distillation of the assassin’s life of watchfulness, survival and fear. At other times, it has a dreamlike quality: a floating hallucination. The Assassin baffles, but more often it quietly captivates and astonishes. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 24, 2015
Like the Barry Lyndon of martial arts movies, every shot has been composed, lit and executed with such care and attention by Hou and his cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing that The Assassin is totally absorbing in its spectacle, from the meticulous details of the interiors to the astonishing, breathtaking locations, from forests and waterfalls, to mountainsides and in one unforgettable moment cliff tops. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenDec 17, 2015
The visuals relegate the acting to secondary importance. They overwhelm the story. And they make The Assassin unforgettable. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesMiriam Di NunzioOct 29, 2015
We are captivated by the beauty we see, lulled into a sense of bliss. We are jolted by bursts of vengeance and violence, and even those are stylized beyond all comprehension. Hou is a master indeed. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 29, 2015
The Assassin achieves a pitch of the cinematic sublime of which very few filmmakers are capable, but it doesn’t make much traditional sense. Hou could do that, if he wants, but he’s after more rarefied game. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 29, 2015
The Assassin is not "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and it is certainly not "Kill Bill". But Hou - a linchpin of Taiwan's New Wave movement, the director of "A City of Sadness" and "The Puppetmaster" - evokes the magic, the majesty, the artistry of the martial-arts movie tradition, and brings a Zen-like sense of observation to the proceedings Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghOct 29, 2015
That everything is held at such a remove is the artistry of The Assassin, but it comes at the cost of emotional investment. It’s so elliptical in its approach that there’s no love for anyone, or anything, outside of beauty. It can be admired — greatly, even — but it can’t be felt. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 23, 2015
At its most persuasive, it conjures live-action versions of Chinese paintings, as if Hou were more at ease with the settings and stakes than with the personalities. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 15, 2015
The film is intriguing, but ultimately opaque, a lovely, inert object that offers, in the name of movie love, an escape from so much that is vital and interesting about movies. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorOct 29, 2015
Every scene is perfectly framed, every symbol lovingly shot, but the story and the characters remain opaque. Read full review
42
HitfixGregory EllwoodMay 22, 2015
Hou and cinematographer Ping Bin Lee (“Renoir”) produce some stunning images on location (one conversation takes place as a fog beautifully emits from the bottom of a valley), but it’s hard to find a thematic connection between the directing style Hou has chosen and the story. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonOct 23, 2015
While The Assassin is a noble misfire, here’s hoping Hou, who is 68, can saddle up for another ride soon. Another decade would be too long to wait for another vision from this most special director. Read full review
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