Assassins (1995) - Stallone, Banderas and The Wachowskis Collide

Stallone, Banderas, Donner, and the Wachowskis Collide in a Flawed but Fascinating 90s Thriller

Rewatching Assassins in 2025 is a strange experience, in the best kind of way. It’s a movie that exists in this weird overlap of talent: Sylvester Stallone at a transition point in his career, Antonio Banderas on the rise, Richard Donner still bringing big-studio clout to action filmmaking, and a screenplay originally written by none other than The Wachowskis — before The Matrix, before they became genre-defining forces, back when Hollywood still didn’t know what to do with them.

The end result? A thriller that’s rough, uneven, occasionally ridiculous, but also surprisingly compelling and soaked in the kind of atmosphere that only 1990s action cinema could produce.

As a 49-year-old guy who grew up on these movies, Assassins hits a very specific nostalgic nerve… even if I freely admit it has problems.

A Director With Real Action Credentials

One of the reasons Assassins still works today is Richard Donner behind the camera. This is the guy who gave us Lethal Weapon, Superman, The Omen, and The Goonies. Donner had a way of grounding wild material with real-world texture, and he brings that same approach here.

Instead of going flashy or stylized, he shoots Assassins with:

clean, readable action
gritty urban environments
practical stunts
a focus on character tension over nonstop explosions

Even when the script veers into bizarre choices, Donner keeps the film feeling like a legitimate, grown-up thriller rather than the straight-to-video knockoff it easily could have become. And honestly, his steady hand probably saves the movie more than once.

Yes, THAT Script Was Written by the Wachowskis

Before The Matrix, Bound, and all their future work, The Wachowskis wrote Assassins. Their draft was apparently much darker, edgier, and more cerebral — more of a psychological duel between two assassins who see pieces of themselves in each other.

Hollywood then did what Hollywood did to a LOT of Wachowski scripts in the 90s: they brought in another writer (Brian Helgeland) and reworked it into something more studio-friendly.

If you watch closely, you can still feel traces of the Wachowskis:

the philosophical undertones about identity
the obsession with duality
the idea of old systems vs. new systems
characters struggling against the roles the world assigns them

It’s buried under a more conventional 90s action plot, but it’s there — little flashes of the filmmakers they’d soon become.

As someone who loves watching careers evolve, it’s fun to see early pieces of the Wachowski DNA hiding in a Stallone/Banderas thriller.

Stallone vs. Banderas — Old School Meets Chaos

This movie lives and dies by its central rivalry.

Sylvester Stallone as Robert Rath

Stallone plays Rath as a man who’s simply exhausted. He’s done the job too long, lived too many lives, buried too many bodies. It’s a quieter performance than you might expect in a 90s action film, and while some have called it flat, I think it works. Rath is a guy who’s dead inside but doesn’t know what to do about it.

Antonio Banderas as Miguel Bain

If Stallone is restrained, Banderas is a full-throttle blast. He’s twitchy, wild, smirking, bouncing from manic energy to lethal precision. Bain is the kind of villain who steals every scene he’s in, and Banderas plays him like he’s having the time of his life.

Whenever these two share a scene — whether they’re talking, stalking, or trying to shoot each other through concrete — the movie suddenly jumps a level.

And Then There’s Julianne Moore

Moore plays Electra, a surveillance expert who ends up caught in the crossfire between Rath and Bain. She’s very good, because she always is, but her character feels like she wandered in from an earlier, more character-driven draft of the script. She adds tension, heart, and vulnerability, even if the movie doesn’t totally know what to do with her.

Action, Atmosphere, and the Very 90s Vibe

This movie FEELS 90s, in a way I honestly miss:

payphones
early laptops
grainy security cameras
oversized trench coats
thunderstorms during pivotal scenes
the obligatory “one last job” storyline

It’s like a time capsule of Hollywood thrillers just before CGI took over and everything got sleek and shiny.

There’s something comforting about that grit.

The Problems? Oh, There Are Problems.

Let’s not pretend this movie is a masterpiece.

Some plot turns make zero sense.
The pacing gets wonky in the middle.
The ending drags on a little too long.
Technology works however the plot needs it to.

But honestly? I don’t care.
This isn’t a movie I watch to be amazed.
It’s a movie I watch because it’s entertaining in all the ways mid-90s action thrillers were entertaining.

And sometimes that’s exactly what I want.

Final Thoughts — A Fascinating Artifact of 90s Action Cinema

Assassins isn’t perfect. It probably isn’t even “great.” But it IS a unique collision of major talent — Donner, Stallone, Banderas, Moore, and the Wachowskis — at a strange moment in all their careers.

As someone who’s revisiting these movies decades later, I found a lot to appreciate:

the performances
the atmosphere
the ambition
the DNA of a darker movie lurking under the surface
and yes… the big, dumb, fun action beats

Sometimes that’s enough.

Final Score: 7/10
A flawed but endlessly watchable thriller that captures a moment in action movie history — and gives us one of Antonio Banderas’s most delightfully unhinged performances.