KinoSis

Basil Dearden and the other boundless optimists involved in the production of this film apparently did intend The Assassination Bureau to turn a profit. This is maybe not a motive you would naturally assume on seeing it now – it’s a kitschy, expensive period-costume action-comedy about a fin de siècle duel between gentlemen-assassins, based on a pulp novel Jack London couldn’t bring himself to finish - and you might think, if the decision to greenlight the project were yours, that its' accounts would probably not finish comfortably in the black. But this is to overlook the key chronological context: the late 1960s. If we're looking for an explanation as to how this got made, possibly "it was the late 60s" will do. And, substantiating that point, its box office was hale enough, as far as I can tell.   Consider the following for a naturalistic and plausible story. A suffragette in 1914 (Diana Rigg) hires an assassin (Oliver Reed) to voluntarily try and have himself assa...

Richard Burton’s contribution to the London-gangland genre might look as if it’s mainly of historical interest now, with its dated dialogue, rather fake looking violence, and a bad-lad cockney accent from Burton that just doesn’t work. Superseded in scary nastiness many times over since it was made, it stands denuded of any power to still shock us; happily, its being denuded lets us get a better look at it, and what it really has to offer a brave punter. Released in a whole year of dark violent fantasies on the screen (among others: Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Shaft, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Wake In Fright, The Devils, Duel - all 1971), Villain feels like it’s not quite part of that psycho-drama moment, but something more grounded and socially astute. Burton plays Vic, an East End gangster who can’t resist branching out to try something new and risky for his gang, namely, their first armed robbery. For the most part, the plot alternates between the crooks (a gormless pac...