Does 'The Assignment' Fumble the Transgender Issue?

Writer-director Walter Hill (Alien, Deadwood, 48 Hours) and actor Michelle Rodriguez drew the ire of the transgender community in 2016 when their movie The Assignment was first announced. The film, in which a hitman undergoes "forced sex reassignment" as retribution for crossing the wrong person, was criticized for what many considered exploitation of gender and trans issues, and having seen the final product, I can attest that its handling of these subject ranges from awkwardly hamfisted to just laughably bad. Despite a vigorous defense from both the film's director and star to the contrary, the film functionally exploits the public's fascination with trans bodies and the "transformation" aspect of gender/sex transition in a shallow, poorly written way.

The plot of The Assignment follows the interviews of Dr. Rachel Kay (played by Sigourney Weaver) in a forensic psychiatric center as she discusses how she exacted her sex-changing retribution on the cisgender Frank Kitchen (played by Rodriguez, wearing a laughably bad beard), the hitman who killed her brother for failing to pay a debt to some gangster-types.  I wish I could say there was more plot to lay to out, but that's pretty much the whole 100 minutes in a nutshell. The rest of the movie is devoted to exploiting trans- and gender-related issues.

Read the rest of this article at Bustle.