In `Assassination Tango,' a film for which he provided both script and direction, Robert Duvall plays an aging professional killer who also happens to be a tango aficionado. Like the gangsters in `The Godfather,' John J. Anderson is able to compartmentalize the morally contradictory elements of his life: he can gun down in cold blood a total stranger, while at the same time lavishing limitless love and affection on his girlfriend and the ten-year old `stepdaughter' whom he worships and adores. When he is sent to Buenos Aires to take out a disreputable retired general, John falls in love with both a lovely young dancer and the style of `genuine' tango dancing to which she introduces him.
`Assassination Tango,' despite the unsavory elements of the story, is a quiet, muted film that is more about this strangely paradoxical character than it is about either assassination or tango. John is a man who has kept his emotions pretty well in check his whole life and now, as he begins to see the end of that life coming, he feels the need to make some kind of meaningful connection with the people around him. What makes John interesting is the way in which Duvall has chosen to portray him. For the most part, John seems totally subdued in his mannerisms and tone of voice, but he often erupts unexpectedly in fits of uncontrolled mania and violence aimed more at objects like payphones or people who annoy him than at his carefully chosen victims, whom he liquidates with an emotional detachment worthy of his profession. Duvall hits all the right notes in making his character both frighteningly bizarre and strangely sympathetic all at the same time.
As a writer, Duvall does better with dialogue than with the narrative framework as a whole. Particularly effective is John's constantly asking the Argentineans with whom he's conversing to repeat what they have just said. Most writer/directors would not be shrewd enough to add this calculated bit of realism, which seems just right given the bilingual situation he has set up. Unfortunately, Duvall's considerably less successful with the story itself, which often wanders aimlessly, lacks clarity (particularly in the cloak-and-dagger sequences) and suffers from an overall failure to meld the various elements into a compelling whole. The supporting performers are all good, but, ultimately, we are left wondering just what Duvall had in mind when he set about making this film. If his purpose was to show that even coldhearted killers can love their kids and appreciate art and beauty, then that ground was pretty much covered by `The Godfather' movies. Even the tango scenes are generally blasé and uninspiring, forcing us to wonder just what it is about this dance that both intoxicates John and leads one of the women in the film to say that the tango is `life, love, hate,' an encomium that certainly doesn't seem justified by the dance sequences in this film.
`Assassination Tango' deserves to be seen for Duvall's performance and for the uniqueness of both its setting and its main character. Just don't expect to be swept off your feet by the dancing.
