Kill James Bond! - S4E31.5: The Assignment

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

This is a preview of a bonus episode! Check it out here, along with our huge backlog of episodes! Whenever, in the course of daily life, an emergency occurs, you naturally call the most appropriate emergency service. If there's a fire, call the fire brigade. A medical emergency requires EMS, a bomb calls for the bomb squad. But who do you call, exactly, when you have a total box office flop about a hitman being forcibly transitioned into Michelle Rodriguez as punishment by Sigourney Weaver? You call us. We'll handle it. ----- Check out friend of the show Mattie's new book Simplicity here, or wherever fine graphic novels are sold! ----- FREE PALESTINE -The Palestinian Communist Youth Union is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ ----- Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the everything app account

I'm hugely sympathetic to those who want and choose to participate in gender reassignment. Welcome to Workplace Grievance Hour, because I legitimately have a workplace grievance about making me watch this. It's not, not transphobic, just because we're all trans and so is all of the audience. Abby, it's your bonus episode. Why have you done this to us? I thought it would be funny. I thought it would be funny to. make us watch the movie where Michelle Rodriguez is a hit man who gets force spent. Yeah. And you were right.

And you know what? It is funny. I was right. I mean, listen. This is blue on blue. We watched The Assignment. A film so reviled that I had to watch it under a fake name. It's on Amazon Prime as tomboy.

Yeah. That's not as good. No, it isn't. It's a much worse name. The assignment's funnier. Yeah. first note here is, all right, Abby, how badly have you fucked me here? And I came out of it. Honestly, I had a pretty okay time with this movie. It was bad,

and I didn't like it. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't Amelia Perez bads. I had some fun. It doesn't even really manage to be all that offensive. It doesn't manage to be that, all that anything. It's kind of just nothing. It's very 2016 in a way that's kind of fascinating. The guy who directed this also directed The Warriors. That was his, like, big, Fascinating. What a strange. And the thing is, in the director's cast of The Warriors, he put in a bunch of, like, comic book panel type things that nobody liked. Ah.

Yeah. And taking, you know, every director's ability to sort of, like, internalized criticism went, I don't care. I want to make a comic book movie. I want to make Sin City. And what he made was this, the assignment. Yeah. It's kind of atomic, blonde, deep. shoot him up, but not as good as either of those, really, which is saying something, because shoot

up was not good. No. It does, it does. Not as good as shoot him up is a huge, like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, we're handling this because we're qualified to, okay? Yeah, do not at home. We're taking this out back. We're in, like, big hazmat suits and big gloves and tongs.

We're watching this movie. Do not watch this movie at home. Yeah, like double zipped in to a, big oxygen tent to watch this fucking thing. And it's fine, and it's fine. It's mid. It was okay. If I do begin by going, I go, Tony Shalhoub?

Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah. We get a two-hit combo of Tony Shalhou and Sigourney Weaver. Yes. Sigourney, how you're doing, babe? Needing money, apparently. One of my favorite bits of this movie is watching these two extremely good actors slalk their way through this dialogue.

because I'm like, this whole scene is like, as you know, exposition, and that's Tony Shellhoop's whole character. It's so, it's like hiring a Michelin star chef to heat up a pot noodle. It's so fucking funny. I think they got all of these scenes out of the day in like one day. Oh, yeah, they just banged him out, yeah. They just banged these out. Do one take and one take only.

I mean, strictly speaking, what we begin with is an extremely obviously Michelle Rodriguez like mascaraed eye and a bunch of like, like, sort of facial bandages, and she does a monologue in her dude voice, which is, let me tell you, it's not good. It's not fantastic. Where she's like, you're not supposed to kill people, but I killed a lot of people, and now they got me being transgender. They're trans my damn gender over here.

Pretty much, yeah, that's pretty much sort of a way. It's a framing device. It's not great. It's one of about 50 framing devices this movie has. Yeah, because we go to Framing Device 2, which is Tony Shahoover's interview. doing Hannibal Lexa, Brackett, Sigerni Weaver in like a mental hospital. She's wearing a straight jacket, and there's a lot of exposition to shuffle our way through. So I'm socially like, now you were like the greatest surgeon of all time, right?

But then you started- As you were aware, you were the greatest like gender surgeon of all time, and you were running an illegal off the book's gender clinic. Yeah, you lost your license. It was shut up two years ago. Yeah, two years ago, it got shot up, and you say that it was done by this mysterious a hitman, but there's no record of who this hitman is, right?

And I'm here to find out whether you're mentally fit to stand trial because everyone thinks you're fucking crazy. Every time they transition to or from the, like, hospital scenes, they do it with a wipe. They do it with the way. This is the closest we've ever come to watching a movie that was all star wipes. By the time it hit the like 80 minute mark

and they were still wiping, I was like, let's fucking go. Yeah, it's good. I mean, it's very comic bookie. Sometimes they do that. And sometimes instead of an establishing shot, they'll have like some concept art, which probably isn't going to, initially I thought, oh, is that to save money?

And then I'm like, you're not going to save that much money. Like, I got established. It's realistic. It's genuinely like this guy's like, I want to make a comic book. Yeah. Yeah. I want to use all the trans.

in Microsoft PowerPoint, because that's what this movie is about, is transition. Yeah, it is. We've got dramatic transitions. So, Ganyweaver used to be a doctor. Yeah. Now she was like, I'm gonna sort of like, be courteous and keep calling you doctor, even though you've lost your medical license, which is, unless they took the degree away, but whatever. And we just fight our way through this scene, which is like, she had a brother.

The brother, it has, is like extremely chaotic. We got a flashback, we get a wipe to a flashback of him playing pinball. He's looking like Jimmy Stewart, no, he's sounding like Jimmy Stewart, and he's looking like Steve Coogan. It's a really weird combination. Because of the cocaine, you can't prove that about Steve Coogan. And it's like, it's like dark, it's grimy, there's like neon lights out the window, there's a sex work with tattoos there. And it's true. My immediate concern here is the cameras are too good.

That's the problem that you're facing here is that if all of this was on like the 35 millimeter guy strikes again, but if this was all on 35mm, right, if this was all on some like bad camcorder from like 2008, it would feel a lot better. If it had castration movie vibes? Yeah, yeah, for sure. But instead it's like very smooth, very digital. And so you can see very clearly this guy compulsively playing pinball. Yes.

and crashing out. Yeah. But he gets a visitor and might not say yes! You see her out of his focus first and it's just like... Her? Do you see her?

Or do you see him? Oh, sorry, you see him. Yeah, you're so right. What you see is Michelle Rodriguez with a sharpied on beard. Yeah, baby. She looks like fucking itchuk from...

Edward and the angry edge. Yeah, yeah she does. Boy mode Michelle Rodriguez. Like, I'm like, I don't know whether this is a compliment or not. Like, but it's not at all convincing. It's not convincing. Maybe that's because I've seen Michelle Rodriguez's face. And so, like, I'm just like clocking her instantly.

Maybe if I'd never seen this actor before, I would be, you know. No, no, it's the cheapest fake beard you've ever seen in your life, glued on somewhat indifferently and heavily. And she's already got long. hair as well just to make it easier. Yeah, they couldn't even give her a short wake. Come on. Come on. He's got a ponytail in this scene.

Yeah, come on. He's got to... Look, he looks like a beautiful Armenian man, right? That's fantastic, right? We approve of this. And he comes in, screwing a silencer onto the end of his pistol and it's like, uh, he's got a real, like, mob guy voice here, and the only drop that I have to explain that is this one.

The goddamn hormones were making me soft. which is jumping ahead of that, right? The whole movie is like this. Come on. Yeah, so it turns out that fucking pinball Tony or whatever owes some money to the mob or something. They don't bother to explain this shit either because they don't care. But Frank kills Sigourney Weaver's brother in the flashback.

Okay. And so Frank then checks into a hotel in the tenderloin in San Francisco and might not say LMAO, because Frank has a A shower and like comes out of the shower. I'm interested in how they did this because like comes out of the shower completely nude, flat chest, hairy chest, still with a fake beard, comically large fake dick. Like absolutely huge, like 28 years later level. This is what I'm fucking saying.

Hock out cinema. This is what I've been trying to get going this whole time. I would like to talk about pubic hair because the shaping. of the pubic hair on Frank Kitchen a name too weird for them to be saying as much as they do but it's in every line they keep saying it yeah it's a perfect like not inverted like upright triangle

it looks like the board from control and it's like why would you do that that way and I've been thinking about this on and off ever since I saw that and I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer so maybe this is a really thing it must be to hide the seams or however it's attached, like.

It's a pubic pyramid and in the correct orientation. Yeah. You're happy to her. Like they're like pyramids up to the belly button. Yeah. Slightly odd. Sort of a happy, like a like a happy sort of like river delta or something. I don't know.

I do love Michelle Rodriguez's physical acting in this though. Like she's, when she comes out of the shower, she does like a, like a, she's walking like a dude. Like it's like very shoulder heavy. I'm like, all right. All right. I'm clocking her by her ungainly gate. Like, it's, it's a,

very, very difficult thing to do this. I would know. I fucking did this a lot. Like, it's hard to do. Like, a respect. I have to say, the voice is, is not good. I have a little bit of a cold right now. I am doing better dude voice than Michelle Rodriguez does.

With one exception. But also, our voices broke. Our voices are broken and hers never have. So it's hard to do, like. Start doing testosterone for this movie. Are you committed or not? Yes, this movie isn't very good. but in my head I want to like bubble Michelle Rodriguez's performance in this like bubble at the side

and we're like, let's say I'm not going to criticize her because like she really does her best with this and like, what a fucking gonzo role too. Oh yeah. I've got compliments for Michelle Rodriguez. I do too. I do too. This is not one of them. And I'm sorry.

She tries. But so we got to meet a second beautiful Armenian man. Honest John Beconian so called because of his love and admiration for the works of Francis. bacon. Yeah. And he's an associate of Sigourney Weavers. Yeah. He's legally not Sean Penn.

Yes. This is Anthony La Palle, I think. Mm-hmm. And this is paint by numbers like mob boss stuff. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, okay, I'm going to give you a mission. Your mission is... An assignment, if you will.

Don't worry about it. It's not going to be important. But the dude is on a holiday at the moment, so just hang out here for a week and wait. Cool. Mm-hmm. Great. One of the things that we find out that honest, honest Tony has been doing here is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is funneling homeless people to the illegal underground gender clinic,

so that, yeah, operate a kind of a forced feminization operation. Mm-hmm. I mean, kind of, but, like, she's, like, she's, right? I thought it was weird. Every, like, every, like, every homeless person you go past now is, like, surged up baddie. And I don't. Every single homeless person to sound, Francisco, it's like a 10 out of 10 smoke show now.

Insanely hot, yeah. All these homeless people look at like... The soup kitchens down there are fantastic now, but they're absolutely. They're the less place to meet people. So one of the things we hear about Sigourney Weaver is, like, she's obsessed with proving that she's the cleverest person in the room. She's always quoting Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. This is a really brutal example of how jarring it is when

a kind of dumb person tries to write a smart person. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. She's always saying Shakespeare and pose stuff and it's like, awesome. That's what smart people are always doing. But it's like, it's laid on too thick. And also, at one point Tony Shalhub just pretty much flat out says, you're obsessed with proving you're the cleverest person in the room.

And it's like, I got that. You didn't need to handhold me through that. Mm-hmm. Yes. But yeah, we hear that she was operating on people like, because she's an artist, you know, she's not just a surgeon. And she thinks that art should not be influenced by moral or political considerations, okay? I hate the fucking American remake of The Skin I Live in, because what are you doing? You're skipping out all the stuff that made it interesting.

Yeah. And the other thing they're doing is that they like, when it cuts into her, for some reason, just before she mentions the Po thing, it like tiles in pictures of Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah. And it like dialed in some Shakespeare a little bit earlier as well. I don't know. Just dramatic transitions. It's what it's about, yeah.

It's the comic book filter is no good. Very atomic blonde, yeah. Yeah. It's very Sin City more than Atomic Blonde. It is. Desperately wants you to save it, it's very Sin City. Mm-hmm. I think.

Sin City and its consequences. So before he can kill this guy, Frank has to kill a week. And he goes to the bar and this 10 out of 10 smoke show blonde picks him up and they go back to the room and fuck. She looks bored during this sex. Yeah. She does look bored, yeah. Yeah. She looks profoundly bored with this. And just note listeners that we do see this

sex scene. This is the one that they show. Yeah, right? You see this fucking one. Yeah. Yeah. Where Michelle Rodriguez is in her ridiculous boy prosthetics. It's very much that I got too much shit on me thing of like entirely covered in like latex prosthetics just like all right you know the drill if you want to hear the rest of this episode you are going to have to head on over to our patreon patreon dot com slash kill james bond

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