‘Assassination Tango’

In his second film as director, writer and star, Robert Duvall reminds us that even killers need love.   [R]

By: Elise Nakhnikian

	Robert Duvall (right) plays a killer-for-hire with passion for dance and an eye for Luciana Pedraza in Assassination Tango.

   Robert Duvall earned his acting stripes playing men’s men in movies like The Godfather, The Great Santini and Apocalypse Now. As hard on themselves as they were on other people, his characters never indulged in introspection, and their actions were often destructive. Yet Duvall made us care about nearly every one.
   Some actors gain our sympathy through gimmicks, like Jack Nicholson’s saturnine smile or Adam Sandler’s rampages, that signal: "Psst, it’s me in here. I don’t care what you think of this guy I’m playing, but you gotta love me." Duvall earns our empathy the hard way, inhabiting his characters so fully that we respond to traits and emotions they may not even acknowledge. His characters feel like real people, and real people are rarely easy to categorize or condemn.
   As Duvall approaches the outer edge of middle age, the men he plays have grown more reflective, as people often do at that stage of life. In movies like Lonesome Dove, The Apostle and now Assassination Tango, they’ve had time to do some soul searching, and they regret their mistakes. They also want to grab a little happiness before it’s too late.
   Assassination Tango is the second movie Duvall has written, directed and starred in — the first was The Apostle — and it showcases two of his passions: the Argentine tango and Luciana Pedraza, his longtime girlfriend. It also features another candidate for his rogues’ gallery: John J. Anderson, an aging New York hit man. John seems to have spent most of his life avoiding emotional ties, but lately he’s been hungry to connect.
   When John is asked to do a job in Argentina, he agrees only on the condition that he’ll be back in time for the birthday of the little girl he dotes on, his girlfriend’s daughter, Jenny. But there’s a delay, and he has to stay in Buenos Aires for weeks instead of days. Killing time while he waits for his target to show up, John becomes entranced by the tango — and by a dancer named Manuela (Pedraza).
   It’s a perilously thin plot, and the script sometimes resorts to paint-by-numbers metaphors, like the panther whose image is intercut with shots of Duvall and Pedraza dancing, or the swarms of kids who keep swirling around the youth-obsessed John. But none of that really matters. This movie is not aimed at the head, and it’s packed with plenty of visceral pleasures to keep the heart racing. Surrendering to the experience, we see the world through John’s eyes, alert to possibilities everywhere and hypersensitive to the beauty of even the most mundane sights.
   There’s the tango, with strong, sensuous moves that make any dancer look glamorous. There are the aging Coney Island and Buenos Aires settings, which cinematographer Félix Monti photographs with such immediacy that you can almost feel the peeling paint. There are little gems like the bit where John in rapturous bites gulps down a sandwich he bought on the street. And there are near-documentary scenes like the first prolonged conversation between John and Manuela, which nails the start-and-stop rhythm and tension-diffusing laughter of a flirtation on the brink of becoming an affair.
   On paper, there’s not much to like about John. A professional killer with a hair-trigger temper, he claims not to care what the former general he was sent to kill did while part of Argentina’s ruling junta. "There’s always two sides to politics," says John. "My politics are: Put the money on the table."
   There’s even something borderline creepy about his fixation with Jenny. It’s bad enough when he describes her as "better than a daughter" and the reason he stays with his girlfriend, but things get even murkier when he insists that a young woman he picks up in a bar call him "daddy" when they make love.
   Duvall the director makes no concessions to the vanity of Duvall the actor. Although he’s still a good-looking man, we see his wizened arms, wrinkled neck and thick middle, not to mention the way he winces when he hits the ground after clambering through a window. He even gets teased about his bowlegged walk. But we also see the charisma, vitality and flashes of tenderness, and even diffidence that attract Manuela to him.
   Manuela is young enough to be John’s granddaughter, but there’s nothing disturbing about their relationship, probably because there’s nothing girlish about Pedraza. With her quick wit, sly smile and stark, stern good looks, she radiates enormous self-confidence, looking at home on the screen even though she’s never acted before. She and Duvall appear to be well matched, playmates as well as soulmates like a latter-day Tracy and Hepburn. Their chemistry is so strong that, while we’re curious to see whether John will complete his assignment and get home safely, all we really want to know in the end is whether he’ll get the girl.
   Trust Duvall to remind us that even killers need love.
Rated R. Contains profanity and some violence.