Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

zardoz-13 Look out Jean-Claude Van Damme! Sofya Skya has appropriated your butt-splitting, body-whirling, high-kicking acrobatics for "Assassins Run," an above-average, straight-to-video, white-knuckled crime thriller with Christian Slater cast as her wealthy husband. "Soldiers-of-Fortune" scribe Robert Crombie and "Shadows in Paradise" actress Sofya Skya share the helm on this exciting but improbable chick flick actioneer with enough suspense and surprises to make it a rewarding experience. Freshman scenarists Diana Cohen and Sergey Veremeenko penned their damsel-in-distress screenplay from a story by executive producer Mikhail Gutseriev. Obviously, these people have seen their share of Alfred Hitchcock movies because they employ the "Psycho" surprise of killing off their leading man in the first half-hour. Indeed, fans of the "True Romance" star should know this from the outset because they might not want to waste their time on the film. The practice of killing off celebrity actors has been done to death, but it really succeeds here because the heroine is a slim, trim, and supple ballerina who discovers that her businessman husband has rubbed out a group of ruthless Russian mobsters. Although these thugs have put Christian on ice, they still need the important documents that will legitimate their hostile take over. Naturally, these greedy dastards and the mystery man lurking in the background are determined to do whatever it takes. They try to tie up the loose threads by framing our hero's grieving widow on a narcotics possession charges and abducting their cute little daughter. After the murderous gangsters knock off billionaire businessman Michael Mason (Christian Slater) at a remote railway crossing, they turn up the heat on his pretty wife, prima ballerina Maya Letiniskaya (Sofya Skya), who dances the Swan Lake. A rival dancer, Ballerina Olga (Svetlana Tsvichenko of "Lost in Siberia") persuades Maya to give her a ride to visit a sick relative. Olga uses the opportunity to distract our heroine so she can plant a baggie of cocaine in Maya's dressing room. After our heroine drops off Olga, the police pull Maya over, and she winds up in prison. Eventually, Maya will give Olga her just comeuppance with a little surprise in her slippers when stands on her toes! People who like women-behind-bars exploitation thrillers will enjoy our heroine's brief stint in the penitentiary. Maya hides a ring that Michael gave her, but one of her evil cell-mates spots her admiring it. During their exercise time outside, this inmate insists that Maya cough up her jewelry. When Maya refuses, the inmate starts kicking the crap out of her. Surprisingly, Maya musters the gumption to fight back and deploys her skills as a ballerina to smash her opponent into submission. A prison official intervenes and the fat, sloppy, female guards confiscate the bauble. Later, Maya's angry cell-mates exact revenge on her later. They slash her wrist and leave the knife behind so it will appear for all practical purposes that our heroine committing suicide. Fortunately, a prison official discovers Maya in time to pack her off in an ambulance with a trio of slimy medical technicians. When it appears that Maya is flat-lining, these technicians wield the paddles on her to restore life to "the whore" as they call her. One of the technicians cannot take his eyes off Maya breasts and decides to rape her. Maya surprises them and manages to escape. Later, with the help of one of Michael's associates, Roman (Cole Hauser of "Pitch Black"), our heroine is able to fly out of the country with the documents intact, but not before she kicks the crap out of two beefy Russian thugs. In America, she is promptly captured and interrogated by Sheriff Nash. The filmmakers exploit this extended interview session as an excuse to pace the story piecemeal so as to heighten the suspense. Mind you, I doubt that Maya could deliver enough momentum to knock down the over-sized gorillas that chase her into the bathroom at an airport, but it makes for an exciting sequence. Sure, Cohen and Veremeeko rely on predictable, time-honored, melodramatic tropes to pump up the action, but "Assassins Run" will keep you entertained throughout its 90 minutes, even if you suspect you know where it is taking you. Angus MacFadyen makes a cameo that is largely a waste of time. He qualifies as the proverbial red herring, and Cole Hauser cements his persona as a villainous turncoat. The idea of a ballerina kicking the living daylights out of her adversaries on more than one occasion is enough to make this movie worth watching more than once. If this idea has been used before, I'd love to know the title of the movie that I missed that contains such ballerina fu.

Jesse Boland Watch this movie. It takes about the first 50 minutes for this to hit it's first real mark, but when it does it brings you something you may have never seen before, and that is a kick ass ballerina. The movie has so much wrong with it, and almost all of the male characters are just there as background props for the real show, and the little girl dancing alone in the theater is so well done. If you like Taken, or Transporter then you will really like this. I have to say it though these days even when Christian Slater's character lives through a whole movie, I bet he is still dying inside like his poor career. If Nicolas Cage, and John Cusack would stop taking every roll there might be better options for Slater, and good old Stephen Dorff gotta mention him since I'm ranting. Nuf of that See this movie!

occupyyourmind11 Did I read that right? "Does what ever she can using her skills at ballet," I'm sorry, i have complete and utter respect for the training and discipline ballet dancers go through. But without any formal Martial Arts training ballet would be about as affected as putting out a fire with rubbing alcohol. No vote for I will not be seeing this one. You can set this one next to Gym-kata for worst skills to mix with kung-fu. And the shameless use of Christian Slater as a star to get people to see the movie is reprehensible. Has he fallen so low that he has to use whatever crap that comes along to get some airtime?? oh wait... Oh yeah, Hollow Man II...

alanjayd I thought this movie was a soldier war/action story based on the picture on Netflix. I ordered it Just out of curiosity because I wanted to see what Christian Slater was doing these days. I last liked him in True Romance but haven't seen him do anything, remotely as good, since. The Netflix promo cover picture http://DVD.netflix.com/Movie/Assassins- Run/70270735?trkid=5966279 must be for a different movie, altogether. The original title, White Swan, was more appropriate and Christian Slater has only a small role in the first quarter of the movie. Obviously, the promo materials, title and DVD release were designed to draw in action fans and try to get a bigger audience for this film which is more of a psychological suspense thriller mixed with some cool but unrealistic martial arts. The real star of the film is Sofya Skya, a slender actress with a beautiful face who plays a ballet dancer, Maya, who's life is turned upside down but the Russian mafia, which is out destroy her husband's fortune and find some bearer bonds worth half a billion dollars. Christian Slater overacts with little sincerity but he's out of the picture early. The last three quarters of the movie are much better than the first. If you get past the initial part without shutting it down, you are rewarded with a passable suspense, mystery, kidnapping, revenge, martial arts stew of a film that's worth a 6 rating, not the 4.2 average on IMDb. The assassin in the film, is creepily played by a mostly silent Russian actor and the ultimate villain is fairly obvious but the film just shuts down at the end, leaving the revenge to the imagination.