THE ASSASSIN Arrives on Blu-ray January 26th

St. Louis-based We Are Movie Geeks readers  may have seen THE ASSASSIN when it played at The St. Louis International Film Festival this past November or can still see it on the big screen when it plays at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium January 15th through the 23rd. If you can’t see it there, the good news is that the acclaimed film arrives on Blu-ray (and DVD) on January 26th.

Back with his first film in eight years, award-winning Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flight of the Red Balloon, Three Times) wowed this year’s Cannes Film Festival (where he won Best Director) with his awe-inspiring THE ASSASSIN, debuting on Blu-ray^™, DVD and Digital HD January 26 from Well Go USA Entertainment. Rich with shimmering, breathing texture and punctuated by brief but unforgettable bursts of action, THE ASSASSIN is a martial arts film like none other. The visually stunning, action-packed film blends tragic historical drama with thrilling swordplay and martial arts in this story of an exiled assassin (Shu Qi, Tai Chi Hero, The Transporter) who must choose between love or duty when she receives orders to kill a man (Chang Chen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Grandmaster) from her past. With a Certified Fresh rating of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, THE ASSASSIN also stars Zhou Yun (Let the Bullets Fly) and Tsumabuki Satoshi (The Vancouver Asahi).

In addition to winning Best Director at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, THE ASSASSIN also won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for Composer Giong Lim and was nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or.  At the 2015 Golden Horse Film Festival, the film was nominated in 10 categories, taking home prizes for Best Director, Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup & Costume Design and Best Sound Effects. THE ASSASSIN is Taiwan’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88^th Academy Awards^®.

Synopsis: In 9^th-century China, Nie Yinniang is a young woman who was abducted in childhood from a decorated general and raised by a nun who trained her in the martial arts. After 13 years of exile, she is returned to the land of her birth as an exceptional assassin, with orders to kill her betrothed husband-to-be. She must confront her parents, her memories, and her long-repressed feelings in a choice to sacrifice the man she loves or break forever with the sacred way of the righteous assassins.

The critics have been raving about THE ASSASSIN:

Alison Willmore at Buzzfeed said:

“It’s so lovely, from the brocade draped interiors to the mist moving over a landscape in the half light, like a series of confounding paintings placed end to end.”

Peter Canavese at Groucho Reviews remarks:

“A Hou film and, therefore an aesthete’s delight…THE ASSASSIN breathes more than it talks, patiently taking in its landscapes and its silk-curtained interiors.”

Laura Clifford at Reeling Reviews says THE ASSASSIN:

“…features scene after scene of heart stopping beauty, all set to one of the year’s most inventively evolving scores…It’s all simply glorious.”

There are plenty of nice extras on the Blu-ray and DVD:

Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes:

• Nie Yinniang
• The Actors: No Rehearsals
• The Fights Between Masters
• A Time Machine To The Tang Dynasty
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