Assassins
By Peter John Gardner
Leave it to Stallone to follow up two movies (excluding Judge Dredd) that display his ass with a movie called "Assassins". Thankfully, we don't see Stallone's butt in this one. "Judge Dredd" sank Stallone's career in the mid-90s, so this one completely slipped under my radar when it came out in 1995. This movie was actually pretty decent. Well, as decent a movie as one can get about two guys with loner jobs and silenced pistols.
The movie was written by the Wachowski brothers, who would later go on to write The Matrix, and then completely fuck up that great idea with two dreadful sequels. It was directed by Richard Donner, who helmed the Lethal Weapon films, as well as Superman and The Goonies. The movie belched out by this team is your paint-by-numbers two-rivals-going-after-one-target film, which pits Stallone vs. Antonio Banderas both going after hacker/voyeur Julianne Moore, but it's rock solid, and it's surprisingly easy to buy Stallone as a professional assassin, probably because he isn't given a lot of dialogue in the film. Stallone is so good at his job that when he loses the trail of Banderas, he hijacks a taxi cab, listens to cab radio, hears a call for a guy wanting a ride to the airport. When Stallone arrives, that guy just HAPPENS to be Banderas. What
Somewhere around the age of 12 or 13, I quit playing sports. I had been playing baseball, soccer, and basketball since I was old enough to hold a ball, but I was gradually losing interest as I got older. I loved playing, but I didn't like competing. "We've got to WIN, WIN, WIN!" coaches would say. Fuck that. I just want to throw the ball around and have fun.
I still hate competing, especially when it comes to winning over a woman when several other guys are trying to do the same, but now I realize that competition breeds better work. Stallone steps up his game when Banderas comes into the mix, so why don't I? I know a thing or two about a thing or two, and there are times where I'm reading something or watching a film while thinking to myself, "Jeez, even I can do better than this". With Project Stallone, I'm my own rival. Usually I start these off by thinking, "How can I make this funnier than the last?" before I crap out something that I'm not happy with but others seem to like.
With women, my best friend Abel used to be my competition. See, Abel is a very attractive, charismatic, and downright funny individual. While we were both living in Vero Beach, we were inseparable best friends. When we'd go out though, girls would immediately flock to Abel. He was the Hall to my Oates (he's the good looking one with pretty eyes, I'm the goofy looking one). Being around him forced me to step up my game. I had to sell my personality, which was really hard to do since he's one of a kind, but I still tried. Since we went our separate ways to Orlando and Gainesville, I started to slack off. My thinking was, "Well, now that I don't have constant competition, I don't have to try as hard".
Sometimes I don't think things all the way through.
