Alastair Brown is a British film director/writer who has lived in Toronto for 30 years. He wrote and directed "Tango In a Cold City" for the National Film Board of Canada in 2000.

Alastair wrote this review for ToTANGO after viewing Assassination Tango at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2002.

Last night Robert Duvall's eagerly awaited film, Assassination Tango, had its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. Like Duvall's other personal films, The Apostle and A Shot at Glory, the actor has again used his own money to make a film dear to his heart. Not only does the actor love tango but also lives part of each year in Argentina. While Duvall was met with the adoration he surely deserves the film won less rapturous applause. Duvall's performance, as a New York hitman, was full of subtle nuances and intelligence but the film fails to deliver the thrill in the thriller or the passion in the dance.

In a New York with twin towers still standing and neighborhoods still full of colorful characters the film creates a slow but handsome picture of John's daily routine. As John goes about his business as a respected killer we are left in no doubt that his life revolves around the delightful Jenny. The relationship between the little girl and the hit man is the most attractive part of the film.

I wish the other important relationship in the film had had the same charm. Given John's profession we can understand why he might be less than honest with Maggie but once in Buenos Aires the hit man must change. The honesty of tango and Manuela should have been the turning point in the story. Instead there is little chemistry between Duvall and Pedraza and therefore little connection between this tale of a professional at work and dance. That the two performers are in real life loving companions does not translate into on-screen passion. Luciana Pedraza, a respected Argentine equestrian, is neither a dancer nor an actress and while she has mastered both to a certain level of competence she remains tentative at both. Her fractured English is often delightful but it remains a barrier, perhaps not between Duvall and Pedraza in person but certainly between actors and audience. On the dance floor, even though carefully choreographed by Miguel Angel Zotto, Pedraza faithfully repeats the steps given her but is unable to display either the spontaneity or the emotions that the role demands.

Perhaps to compensate for his lover's limitations Duvall has been beguiled by the beauty of show tango and much of the dance in Assassination Tango is snippets of performance rather than an attempt to use tango as a language that can develop character and push the narrative forward. Here Duvall's truthfulness as a director just gets in the way.

In a line that brought a knowing chuckle from the audience Manuela replies to John's tentative pick-up line, that yes, in Argentina an aging stranger does indeed stand a chance with such a beautiful young woman. Beyond being an amusing reference to the forty-year age gap between the couple this provocative line is never explored. Out on the dance floor this worldly dancer might indeed seem an appropriate partner to the coltish young woman. But Duvall is perhaps too aware of the pathos of recent Eastwood/Redford films, with their graying heroes and childish heroines, and is careful to make sure that there is little physical contact between hit man and teacher. Even on the dance floor there is little connection between the two. Instead of sizzling with repressed fires the dances between the two show only a teacher who cannot teach and a leading man who must confine his craft to the limitations of his partner. The film's central trope that tango can reveal the true essence of this conflicted man remains an intriguing one. It is just that Duvall and Pedraza are unable to animate the idea.

So we are left with a thriller that has a hollow heart and too many unresolved elements to satisfy an audience. While each moment feels truthful Ms. Pedraza has distracted Duvall the Director and the themes of betrayal, political intrigue and redemption are either not fully developed or not clearly explained.

The film is at its best creating nostalgic portraits of New York and Buenos Aires, the one of a city before Disneyfication had suffocated it like a republican dream, the other of a community still obsessed with history rather than survival.

Well, this is not quite all. At the edges of the frame the film gloriously captures the milieu of tango in the city of its birth. As John follows Manuela from club to club joyous glimpses of Argentine's finest dancers merge with scenes set in the crumbling, Belle Epoch city to bring alive the soul of tango. Down those dark alleys a killer might await but so might the offer of three minutes of truth out on a tiny dance floor. But only in a single extended scene does this perfume of tango truly animate the story. Duvall has spoken of not using a real tango teacher in the role of Manuela for fear of the language barrier but in this scene, where Maria Nieves plays Manuela's mother, the great dancer's true authority as teacher and dancer made this viewer at least wish that Duvall had said to hell with the spoken word. A director with less reverence towards the traditions of tango surely would have been tempted to have thrown the great actor into the arms of the great dancer and forced both to accommodate the other. Even so, as this magical scene spills out onto the Buenos Aires night streets the film for a few moments captures the joy of a life given up to tango.

Robert Duvall has created a vehicle to show-case tango but the sex and danger, trust and betrayal, passion and hate that might have given this story dramatic blood have gone missing. In the end tango is just local colour in the middle of a rather mundane crime story.

It was at another film at the Festival, The Guys, that I felt tango was given more powerful homage. For a few moments, in this film about the firefighters of the 9/11, tango becomes a moment of human contact that alone can bring comfort and solace to a troubled heart in the middle of the tragedy. Assassination Tango never rises to these heights.

Produced by Frances Ford Coppola and distributed by United Artists, Assassination Tango should come to a theatre near you.