Assassins (1995 film)

Assassin Robert Rath plans to retire, haunted by the memory of murdering his mentor Nicolai several years ago. While Rath is on an assignment to dispatch tycoon Alan Branch at the memorial service of his brother Samuel, the strategy backfires when Alan is eliminated by Miguel Bain, another assassin. Bain greatly admires Rath but also intends to kill him and establishes himself as the world's greatest hitman. Bain is arrested but manages to escape after killing two police officers.

As Rath tries to figure out who sent Bain, his contractor offers him a lucrative job that could allow him to decamp faster: kill a notorious computer hacker named Electra along with four Dutch buyers of a computer disk she possesses,and then retrieve the disk. Electra has set up CCTV cameras and an elaborate mechanism for remotely moving items between rooms in the building where she is based.

At the designated location for the purchase, Bain locates and kills the four Dutchmen, who turn out to be Interpol agents. Realizing Bain is once again after the same target as he is, Rath spares Electra and the two make their getaway with the disk. Frightened by the entire situation, Electra runs away from Rath to her house. Both Bain and Rath separately track her down. During the ensuing fight, Bain kills Electra's neighbors and is about to kill her when Rath intervenes. Realizing Rath does not want to kill her, Electra decides to trust him.

Rath exchanges the disk for his fee, given to him in a briefcase. However, the briefcase contains a bomb planted by his contact. After surviving the attempt on his life, Rath is told by Electra that she swapped the disk, unsure if he would come back. Rath demands a greatly increased fee from his contact for the genuine disk, with the money to be wired to a bank in Puerto Rico. The contact agrees but also hires Bain to kill Rath.

Rath and Electra travel to the bank, where he concludes that Bain will use an adjacent abandoned hotel as a sniper post. Fifteen years earlier, Rath had shot Nicolai from the same building. Rath sets a trap, managing to both get the money and, with Electra's help, engage Bain in a gunfight. With Bain seemingly dead, Nicolai appears and reveals that he had worn a bulletproof vest when Rath shot him years earlier. Recognizing Nicolai's intention to kill them both, Rath and a surviving Bain both shoot him dead. Despite their brief alliance, Bain draws a gun on Rath, whose back is turned. Electra puts on her sunglasses, allowing Rath to use the reflection to aim a shot backwards through his own jacket, killing Bain.

After Bain's death, Rath and Electra leave together. Their true names are Joseph and Anna.

• Sylvester Stallone as Robert Rath / Joseph Rath
• Antonio Banderas as Miguel Bain
• Julianne Moore as Electra / Anna
• Anatoly Davydov as Nicolai Tashlinkov
• Muse Watson as Ketcham
• Steve Kahan as Alan Branch
• Kai Wulff as Remy
• Mark Coates as Jereme Kyle
• Kelly Rowan as Jennifer
• Reed Diamond as Bob

The original spec script was written by The Wachowskis and sold for $1 million to producer Joel Silver around the same time he bought their script for The Matrix, also for $1 million. The script was similar to the final film, but with a more developed love story between Rath and Electra and a briefer ending without the character of Nicolai. Silver offered Richard Donner $10 million to direct, but Donner insisted the script be rewritten to tone down the violence and make the central character more sympathetic. Donner brought in Brian Helgeland, who did a page-one rewrite and earned a co-screenwriter credit. The Wachowskis attempted to remove their name from the film but were refused by the Writers Guild of America.^[7]

The film was shot in Seattle, Washington, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Portland, Oregon.^[8][9]