ASSASSIN'S CREED (AVA)

  

'Ava' is not a terrible movie.

It's just weary.

A dot to dot, jet setting thriller with a starry cast, Tate Taylor's film is a tired retread of every female assassin movie you have ever seen.

It's 'La Femme Nikita,' 'The Long Kiss Goodnight' and 'Atomic Blonde' on sedatives.

Jessica Chastain is Ava Faulkner who trots the globe carrying out hits for a shadowy organisation run by Colin Farrell's assassin turned boss, the terrifyingly named Simon.

The problem is Ava can't stop engaging her targets in conversation before she sends them to meet their maker.

And that just gets on Simon's goat.

At the start of the movie, she is dispatched to bump off Ioan Gruffudd's cocky financier Peter Hamilton.

Posing as a chauffeur, she flirts with him and accepts his offer to get into the back seat, only to pull a gun on him.

She is unable to find out what he did to become a target and shoots him but Diana Silvers' Camille is lurking in the background on a motorbike listening to proceedings because the car is bugged.

Ava flies to her hometown of Boston, checks into a hotel and learns that her next assignment is to be in Riyadh.

While she is in town, she connects with her sister, Jess Weixler's Judy at a gig she is performing in a bar.

Judy has not seen her in eight years and in the meantime, Judy has married Ava's ex-boyfriend, Common's Michael.

She has grown resentful of being left in Boston to handle their mother, Geena Davis' Bobbi on her own.

Bobbi, whose husband we learn was unfaithful, is in hospital and there's an awkward reunion.

However before there is time to properly dig deep into the mother daughter dynamic, Ava is off on her travels, playing a femme fatale in the Saudi capital.

Wearing a sleek dress, she seduces a German general, injecting him with a substance designed to make it look like he had a heart attack and tries to get him to talk in his last moments about what crime he is being punished for.

However the assassination goes wrong when a piece of information she has given earlier on to the General's colleagues turns out to be duff.

Ava has to shoot her way out of a tricky situation, leaving a trail of destruction behind her.

Her handler, John Malkovich's Duke shoulders the blame for the mess but Simon has decided she is surplus to requirements.

He has hired another assassin to kill Ava when she returns to Boston.

However Duke's affection for Ava is such that he goes to plead her case to Simon, who is his first protege, in British Columbia.

Ava, meanwhile, struggles in Boston with the feelings she has for Michael and the realisation that he has built up serious debts to Joan Chen's shadowy gambling den owner, Toni.

We all know, with all these elements, it's about to all go Pete Tong...

And that's the problem because there are absolutely no surprises in Taylor's efficiently made thriller.

The film rumbles along with very little passion, doing its thing according to the female assassin movie playbook.

And so, you get your fistfights.

You get your gunfights.

You get your characters smeared with blood.

You get your elaborate messages about the next assignment.

You get your damaged backstory for the central character - in this case, a history of substance abuse.

You get your forbidden love - hello to Michael.

You get your surrogate father figure/mentor - step forward, Duke.

In fact, the only surprising thing about the movie is hearing Colin Farrell playing the head of a sinister organisation in his own Dublin accent.

So this is not blowing your socks off stuff.

Chastain is alright as the heroine.

The same can be said for Farrell, Malkovich, Davis, Weixler, Common, Chen, Gruffudd and Silvers.

It all feels a bit quarter tank - decently shot by Stephen Goldblatt with some zippy editing by Zach Staenberg.

However the foundation that Taylor's film is built on, Matthew Newton's screenplay is simply devoid of any innovation and passion.

It's as if nobody can be arsed.

And if they can't be arsed, why should we?

('Ava' was released in cinemas in Hungary on July 2, 2020 and was released digitally in the UK and Ireland on August 27, 2020)