Hou Hsiao-Hsien is one of those directors the mere mention of whose name sends filmsnobs into paroxysms of pleasure. 'The Assassin' is the first of his films that I myself have seen, and I've got to say I have mixed feelings.

I was attracted to the film by the set designs featured in the trailer, and these are fantastic: lush, richly-detailed, lavish reproductions of nobles' palaces and peasants' hovels. The costumes are similarly splendid. The natural scenery is spectacular also, with Hou taking full advantage of the endless steep wooded hillsides of his Far Eastern filming locations.

But oh, the pace of the film is slow. Far too often, Hou allows his camera to linger, unmoving, on a particular subject that is doing nothing - certainly not adding anything to the story. This may be because of the sparse nature of the plot - a young woman in ninth century China, raised from childhood to be an assassin, is sent back to her native Weibo to assassinate her cousin, the region's governor. Once there she gets caught up in some palace intrigue, but it's all sketched out very lightly and, to be honest, for some of the time I was having trouble staying awake.

But those sets *are* gorgeous...

Assassin is a Taiwanese film that I can appreciate even though I didn't particularly like it. This is because it's obvious that the filmmakers worked hard on the film but it still isn't a movie I'd want to see again. How, exactly, did they work hard? Well, the film is set in 7th century China and instead of using modern language, they actually had the actors speak in this dead Chinese language! This means that everyone watching the film will need to use the captions that accompany the movie...much like what they did when they used ancient Aramaic when the film The Passion of the Christ was made. Additionally, the sets and costumes are lovely...and the hairstyles and people look much like they do in old scrolls of the era.

So why was I so lukewarm about The Assassin? Well, you'd think that considering the film is about a female assassin that it would have a lot more energy. Instead, the energy only occurs on occasion...and not often enough. While I have watched thousands of foreign films, this one was one of the most difficult to watch because of the low energy and very deliberate pacing. In fact, I actually kept falling asleep and had to force myself to keep watching. A box of No Doze pills and a pot of coffee clearly would have helped! This was made worse because often instead of seeing things happen, you heard them described. Overall, it's a hard film to love and one that is easy to skip. Not a bad film, but certainly one I did not enjoy. If you care, the film is out this week on DVD through Netflix.

One of my pet peeves in cinema is when a director makes a film in a genre they're not interested in. It happened with Marc Foster when he made QUANTUM OF SOLACE and look how that film ended up. The same happens with THE ASSASSIN, a gorgeously shot period martial arts movie from Taiwan, which is directed by art-house film-maker Hsiao-Hsien Hou, a man who has said he doesn't like lengthy martial arts scenes. In THE ASSASSIN, you find out what a martial arts movie looks like when it has very little action in it.

The result? It's a pretentious bore of a film. Oh yes, I know it looks wonderful. I wish Hou had shot in widescreen like every other director, as to say fullscreen looks better is just nonsense - and smacks of pretentiousness again. The countryside setting is vibrant and I did really enjoy the fight scenes when they do occur. They're over very fast, like in an old samurai movie, and they have a snappiness and aggression that the more elaborate wuxia movies lack. What a pity, then, that the rest of the film outside of the fights is so dull and lacking in basic film-making abilities. There's no characterisation outside of Shu Qi's lead, and the back story is needlessly complex as it jumps through time and fails to adequate introduce supporting players. The result is that THE ASSASSIN is a fine-looking but ultimately hollow viewing experience.