Veteran director Walter Hill (48 Hours, Red Heat) is bracing himself for a cluster-fest of controversy when his new 1979 revenge thriller film The Assignment is released Friday.
Hill directed 1979 cult favorite The Warriors but now he has Leftist keyboard warriors on his case. They object to his new movie’s concept in which a male hitman named Frank Kitchen (Michelle Rodriguez) undergoes gender reassignment surgery at the hands of a sadistic doctor played by Sigourney Weaver after (s)he kills her brother.
The internet exploded with allegations of transphobia when The Assignment played at the Toronto Film Festival (as (Re)Assignment). Rodriguez was forced to reassert her wokeness saying, “This is an action genre film…it’s an entertainment piece. Calm down guys, I’m on your team.”
But Hill now says the original title of the movie was Tomboy: A Revenger’s Tale before the title was changed for “politically correct reasons” as it’s no longer acceptable to call a movie after the phrase denoting girls who like boisterous activities associated with boys.
Hill told Coming Soon website: “I still prefer the original title…I made the movie as Tomboy: A Revenger’s Tale. I thought that was a fair description. But it didn’t translate to other cultures and the thinking was that Tomboy was not a politically-correct phrase.
“As I’m sure you know, as it was being shot it was under attack by certain people who objected to what they perceived was the subject matter. The whole damned thing was messy, really.”
The movie is still being called Tomboy in the UK but it’s hard not to think things will get even messier for Hill whatever the movie’s merits, given its theme.
