Written yesterday afternoon to a critic friend after catching Walter Hill‘s critically lambasted (Re)Assignment, to wit: “I just saw it, and it’s nowhere near as problematic as I’d been led to expect. Pulpy and crude, yes, but fairly intelligent, a little slow but far from ludicrous, and generally not bad. It’s way, way better than either of the Sin City flicks. Michelle Rodriguez with a beard looks like Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis. I suspect, however, that those ridiculous time & place title cards along with those animated freeze-frames were tacked on in post. It also seems as if those Tony Shalhoub-interviews-Sigourney Weaver exposition scenes might have been shot after principal photography. And what moron decided that (Re)Assignment was a better title than Tomboy? I’ve already mentioned that the plot bears a certain similarity to Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin That I Live In. If Sam Fuller was still around he could’ve made something like this.

(l.) Frank Kitchen, the male version of Michelle Rodriguez in Walter Hill’s (Re)Assignment; (r.) Oscar Isaac in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis.