Hidden Assassin aka The Shooter (1995)

This is a film my buddies and I have been meaning to see for a long time. No place carried it, and when asked, they'd often confuse it with Hidden Agenda, which would get our hopes up, only to have them cruelly dashed. Finally, through the beauty of Netflix, I was able to bring this bad boy home.

Hidden Assassin, or Hidden ASS-ASS-in, as I call it, is about a Cuban ambassador who's assassinated on US soil, and it's up to Dolph to find the shooter in order to save US-Cuban relations. First thought is it's a famous chick sniper that did it, but after Dolph catches her and she helps him clean a nasty wound on his forearm in her bath water (while she's in it), he decides she can't be it. He risks everything to find out who the real shooter is, and the deeper he digs, the more he finds himself immersed in a tangled web of deception and intrigue.



This was a pretty sweet Dolph flick. You'll know it's gonna be good too, when you see the laser sight trained on the Cuban ambassador in the first scene as he's about to be assassinated. It's not done with a laser pointer, like most films would do. They use and animated red dot. It was hilarious, and the rest of the film lived up to that hilarity.

Dolph Lundgren, as always, was sweet in this. I unfortunately didn't get this film in time for Dolph Fest '07, but I'll be sure to include it next year. He's got this great 90s vintage bowl cut, that I personally liked better than the great hair he had in Pentathlon. He has a great scene where he gets drunk in trying to impress the suspected female shooter at her restaurant with his knowledge of wines. He's stumbling around, and he says to the chick "I must respectfully inform you that I'm wasted." My personal favorite was at the end, when he's running around with his classic Dolph sprinting form, and his T-shirt's soaked in blood. Good times, baby.



This had Det. Sgt. Taggart from Beverly Hills Cop. I would've preferred Judge Reinhold, but I feel like beggars can't be choosers. He plays Dolph's buddy in the CIA or whatever, and we're supposed to believe he's a sophisticated secret agent, as opposed to a blue collar cop. It's like they pulled him from a guest spot on Hardcastle and McCormick and gave him a gun and some super secret agent lines. I can't blame them for casting a Beverly Hills Cop alum, though, even if he did seem out of place.

The chick in this is pretty hot. She's a lesbian, and owns a club and a restaurant with her partner. Apparently she's not that much of a lesbian, though, because she hooks up with Dolph later on. I can't say I'm surprised. If anyone could make lesbian chicks straight, it's Dolph. I'm sure he's made some straight dudes gay. Just the same, I think she wasn't really supposed to be a lesbian, they just threw that in there to make the film more erotic, like maybe she was bi-curious.



I'm not sure I understood the premise that Dolph is running around like this to save US-Cuban relations. I know it wouldn't look good if we were assassinating their diplomats when they visited our country, but on the other hand, I never got the impression that we were blamed for the assassination, just blamed for doing a poor job protecting him. Either way, is that a major issue in the State Department? "Hey, does Cuba still hate us? Yes? Okay, well just make sure they don't hate us any more than they already do, all right?" Of course, I've heard of worse premises for movies that were more successful than this one: try our Founding Framers, strapped for cash to run a revolutionary war, decided to hide a multi-billion dollar treasure in cave somewhere, and now, some 200 years later, Nicolas Cage is on the scene to find it. I'll take Dolph saving US-Cuban relations over that sack of asscrack anytime.

If you're a huge Dolph fan like my friends and I are, this is a must rent. If you're just a bad movie fan, and you think Dolph's just all right, I'd rent this too, because it delivers on the Direct to Video action end too. It's just a good bad movie, and you and your friends will have plenty fun making fun of it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114432/