This may be a greater labor of love for writer-director-star Robert Duvall than his other auteurist effort, 1997’s The Apostle, though it’s the far lesser film. A valentine to the dance form the actor adores, Assassination Tango nevertheless suffers from infatuation. Duvall’s clearly taken with the tango, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be taken with his movie. The awkward plot follows an aging Brooklyn hit man (Duvall) who travels to Buenos Aires for a job. During his downtime, he studies the tango and soon becomes deeply involved in the Argentinian dance scene. Assassination Tango is hard to truly dislike. Duvall is uncompromising and spry – his hit man thankfully never suffers a crisis of conscience – and the Argentinian locations make for a refreshing milieu. Yet in the end, you get the feeling Duvall took a tango trip to Buenos Aires and haphazardly decided to make a crime movie while staying there.
