The Assassination Bureau (1969)

Very Cool!!!

Disturbing yet enthralling

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The film is done with a loopy goofy comic style very akin to live theatre with winking and mugging to the camera to make sure that the audience gets the conceit beneath the story. There is a nice moment when the Madame of a brothel welcomes Dragomiloff in disguise as a new client when she says "You'll be one of our best known unknown visitors". It is the ideas at work to center the film that gives it its appeal but this doesn't really allow a movie like this to succeed, which is probably why the producers applied such an artificial style. The flow of ideas is likely to leave the average viewer a little fuzzy-minded (I found myself losing consciousness from time to time), but the payoff is a well-done comic finale in a zeppelin, and a happy ending with love triumphing over all.This is one of the feature productions Diana Rigg did after her successful run as Emma Peel on the very popular British TV show "The Avengers", although it is not one of her best. Rigg is still funny in episodes of Ricky Gervais's "Extras" and her tongue-in-cheek performance of the leather clad secret agent on British TV is probably what everyone remembers her best for. Rigg was not the best dramatic actress and her best roles are stagy character types like Edwina Lionheart in Theater of Blood, and as Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper.

Typical 1960s big-budget all-star entertainment with an unlikely but intriguing backdrop (the political turmoil in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century) and agreeably treated as black comedy. As can be surmised, the titular organization – headed by Oliver Reed and numbering among its members Telly Savalas, Curt Jurgens, Philippe Noiret, Clive Revill and Kenneth Griffith – disposes of people it deems criminal but which the law apparently can't reach…until some of them start to get too big for their boots, while Reed accepts lady journalist Diana Rigg's offer of a contract on himself! Stylish and colorful (shot on a variety of stunning European locations and with great care given to sets, costumes and props), the film is vastly entertaining along the way – gleefully poking fun at politics and murder at every turn. Reed and Rigg make a very appealing couple, while Savalas, Jurgens et al have fun sending up their respective images; of course, Rigg and Savalas would be re-teamed that same year for the James Bond outing ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.The script, therefore, delivers plenty of suspense and surprise (including numerous disguises and near-escapes for the hero) and is capped by a spectacular climax in which a bomb attack via zeppelin – targeting a castle where all the rulers of Europe have convened for a peace conference – is thwarted.

Have always loved this movie - an almost perfect combination of Victorian Toy-Store sets and costumes, dry, black humor with witty priceless dialog ("You're not an assassin, you're a critic!") Add the perfect cast..well, I personally think it's a minor classic. I could be wrong, but I think this the only time Oliver Reed had anything close to a traditional, dashing-leading-man role. Awesome Diana Rigg seemed to be channeling both Glynis Johns and Julie Andrews roles in "Mary Poppins" at the same time.Best of all, Michael Relph's production design...take a second and remember his incredible designs...the French bordello, the assassination bureau's meeting hall, the Zeppelin interiors...and I couldn't even stop humming the idiotic Faux-Henry Mancini theme song ("Life Is A Precious Thing") This may have been one of the last movies that you could apply the adjective "frothy fun" to.

Oliver Reed stars as the unlikely-monikered Ivan Dragomiloff, the head of an international (though wholly European) bureau of assassins (hence the title) who will kill anyone for the right price. When investigative journalist Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg) shows up at his doorstep asking him agency to accept a contract to kill him, the game, as they say, is afoot.The movie doesn't take itself seriously and you shouldn't either. The arch dialogue – sounding like something from an off-off-off-Broadway play -- is preposterous but fun, and Reed and Rigg twist their tongues around such ludicrous tongue twisters that by fifteen minutes into the film you're laughing at the movie, not with it.But it's also fun to watch two pros spar with one another with such purple prose, and everyone else in the film – even Savalas – is along for the ride, playing racial stereotypes and accents to the hilt (the film is, after all, 36 years old). Adding to the laughs are overdone costumes; set in the years just prior to WWI, Rigg spends most of the movie in Gibson Girl get-up, while Reed moves from one overdone suit to the next.The plot is actually a pretty good idea and I could see a remake of this film being done (hopefully with a more contemporary setting), though that would lose you the most rib-tickling part of all, a long fight scene atop a creaky zeppelin between Reed and Savalas and his cronies.Reed here is sharp and funny – I hadn't realized he had a gift for comedy like this – and he's also remarkably handsome and lean (my strongest memories of him are playing Bill Sykes in Oliver and Athos in the good Musketeer movies, both shabby characters). Reed in fact comes off as Johnny Depp's cinematic predecessor, giving a crisp, precise but offbeat performance. Rigg is howlingly miscast as the 'young Miss Winter' (she was 31 when she made the film), a tee-totaller straight-lace who, predictably, eventually comes around; but her wonderfully expressive face is put to good use here, and hey, Di Rigg in a gunny sack is still Di Rigg. I won't say much about Savalas – cast as a sort of English William Randolph Hearst – because I find he plays one character no matter who it is, and you either like his unirole acting style or you don't. I don't. It was, however, nice to see Clive Revill hamming it up as an Italian count, and a host of B actors from the Avengers (most notably Warren Mitchell, who at 80 is still working); all of them manage to understand perfectly the tongue-in-cheek tone of the film and seem perfectly at home.This movie will probably play as overly silly to most modern audiences, though it is light-hearted fun; but any fans of Rigg or Reed or even slightly campy comedies should give this one a look. Reed, again, is surprisingly deft (Deppft?), and Diana Rigg, well, let's just say I'm beginning to understand why she is chiefly remembered as Emma Peel (and the only woman James Bond ever married, but hey, that's just good taste).