Assassination Tango

Assassination Tango

The tango is a piece to shore against his ruin.” Robert Duvall’s “Assassination Tango” isn’t strictly about crime or dance, and that will be a problem for some audiences. “More assassination, less tango!” demands the online critic Jon Popick. But I’ve seen plenty of movies about assassination and more than a few about the tango, and while Duvall’s movie doesn’t work all the time, what it tries to do is interesting. It wants to get inside the head of a man whose fixations prevent him from seeing the bigger picture.

John J. Anderson (Duvall) talks to himself constantly, carrying on a running commentary that might eventually turn into madness, but not yet. Not young anymore, he is a professional killer who wants to retire and devote himself to his woman, Maggie (Kathy Baker), and especially her 10-year-old daughter Jenny (Katherine Micheaux Miller).

He likes Maggie but loves Jenny with an intensity that may strike some as alarming: “She is my soul, my life, my eyes, my everything.” Is he a repressed child molester? Later in the film a hooker reports: “He wanted me to call him ‘Daddy.’” But no, I don’t think he poses any kind of threat. He’s not an actor out but rather a holder in; he broods and his emotional weather is stormy but invisible. Most people he deals with including Frankie (Frank Gio), the mobster who employs him have no idea who he really is or what he really needs.

Sent to Buenos Aires for his last job assassinating a wealthy general Anderson meets with local contacts but keeps his own counsel. We realize this isn’t your average crime story; most of the advice given by local bad guys is rejected by him; he wanders off alone somewhere; looks preoccupied or distracted; and by accident wanders into a dance club, where he is mesmerized by one of the performers, Manuela (Luciana Pedraza).

He comes back. He asks her to dance. She doesn’t know what to make of him. He requests tango lessons. They begin a relationship that defies easy definition, and it seems for a time as if the movie might deprive us of both the usual payoffs: no murder, no romance.

Whether or not it delivers on those fronts I will leave for you to discover. Duvall never makes them the point; he wrote as well as directed his script, which is not about a killer or lover but about a man who has been hurt in some way we’re not exactly told about and who roams his life looking for anything that can fix him back up again. This could be love for a young girl, mastery of the tango, idealization of a dancer’s skill or exercise of his assassin’s craft.

Those impatient with plot may miss Duvall’s film altogether. Yes, he sits around in cafes doing nothing much quite often. Yes, his conversation is limited indeed. Yes, nobody knows what he wants not even Manuela. Yes, in maddening digressions he ambles toward assassination. Yes there are dance scenes that slow things down but only if things slowing down is what it’s all about

The tango is a dance performed with a partner, filled with rehearsed passion that is timed so precisely there are no mistakes or improvisation. (You can always tell a bad tango dancer by the bruises on their shins.) So why does Anderson love this dance? Because it gives his emotional chaos an outline strings it up, puts bones to it, lets him pretend he’s disciplined when he isn’t. It’s about control for him, and provides inflexible rules for how one should interact with their partner.

What “Assassination Tango” is about, I think, is John J. Anderson’s quiet and inward attempt to slow his descent toward incompetence. He has Maggie but cannot envision their future together. He meets Manuela but does not know whether or not to offer her a future. He has a job but suspects it is some kind of trap set by someone else; people threaten him all over town every day, yet his biggest threat comes from inside himself falling apart falling confused losing sense of self etc., etc. And so on and so forth… The tango is just another piece that keeps him from collapsing entirely.

I don’t quite think the movie works. It’s too cagey at its center secretive about what it wants us to care most about. It feels scatterbrained unless we’re quick enough with our observations; willing to watch Anderson in certain ways; able to sniff out the fact early on that this won’t be your typical murder mystery or romantic potboiler but rather something more along the lines of an existential character study crossed with an instructional video on different kinds of coping mechanisms.

John J. Anderson has so many secrets from everyone around him that even this film keeps some of them hidden away beneath its skirts like contraband cigarettes smuggled through customs via inner thighs during wartime blackout hours only available if you know where exactly they’ve been stashed.

Duvall has built it from inside out, seeing it not through our eyes but rather his own; he’s tried to give us a window into Anderson’s mind instead of just letting us look at him from across the street like some kind of creep. Anyway “Assassination Tango” is still an interesting little movie, and I’m glad I’ve seen it. It taught me something about filmmaking strategies.

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