_**“Are you an assassin?” “I’m a soldier.” “You’re neither.”**_

A professional assassin (Anson Mount) is given an ambiguous gig in a small town in the Poconos. Can he get the job done with as little collateral damage as possible? Anthony Hopkins plays his boss, Abbie Cornish a waitress and David Morse a deputy.

"The Virtuoso" (2021) is a neo-noir crime drama/thriller with a Tarantino bent. Films with criminal protagonists don’t usually interest me unless there’s angle of redemption or some other intriguing aspect. “Death Wish,” “The Punisher” and “Taken” are exceptions because the central character isn’t really a criminal, but rather a (anti)hero on a mission of justice denied by the system.

This is a well-made neo-noir with an interesting second person narration. It doesn’t focus on eye-rolling action scenes and explosions every five minutes, but rather the assassin figuring out the mission, executing it (no pun intended) and surviving. Unfortunately the gross contrivances of the script emerge in the last act and it’s impossible to suspend disbelief, as they say. I get the message of the film, but what do I care? Assassins who heartlessly murder people simply to make a good living are criminal scumbags and should be executed themselves.

Still, the heavy mood is to die for, the psychology of a professional assassin is well written, Mount makes for a great masculine protagonist, Abbie is jaw-dropping in a curvy way, the second-person narration is effective and the locations & score are superb.

The movie runs 1 hour, 50 minutes, and was shot in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the Poconos, as well as Santa Ynez, California, which is about an hour’s drive west of Malibu.

GRADE: B-/C+