Assume your best Trailer Guy voice: “The United States’ new first lady is a major bitch … and only Charles Bronson can protect her from … Assassination!”
In this rickety product from the Cannon Films assembly line, Death Wish master Bronson plays Secret Service agent Jay Killion (note that last name), who’s assigned to guard the life and body — upturned nose included — of Lara Craig, wife of the newly elected POTUS. That she is portrayed by frequent co-star Jill Ireland, then Bronson’s real-life wife, is the most interesting element of an otherwise routine actioner.
Killion takes his job very seriously, whereas Mrs. Craig could give a shit, assuming her haughty attitude of entitlement somehow makes her impervious to bullets. She slowly changes her tune when bad guys in their vicinity start playing tag with heat-seeking missiles. She and Killion fight; she and Killion flirt; she and Killion are trapped in what feels like Hart to Hart fan fiction.
One would expect a tighter film from Peter Hunt — director of the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and editor of many more 007 adventures — but Assassination is a royal mess, overstuffed with weaponry, a dune buggy chase and so. Many. Motorcycles. It’s one of the weakest, least engaging projects to emerge from the Bronson/Cannon partnership, so wrong that Bronson even quips, “I don’t want to die from a terminal orgasm.” Sorry, Chuck, but that sounds like exactly the way to go. —Rod Lott