the assignment wiki

The Assignment

The Imperium measures and records the psionic activity and power level of psychic individuals through a rating system called The Assignment . Comprised of a twenty-four point scale, The Assignment simplifies the comparison of psykers to aid Imperial authorities in recognizing possible threats. [1]

Beings which utilize psychic powers, or psykers , exist within many of the races residing within the galaxy. Human psykers, Eldar Warlocks, Ork Weirdboyz all fall into this category. [2] Beings such as Daemons of the Warp are made of purely psychic energies. [3] There are races, like the Tau , which are devoid of psykers or psychic powers. [4] There are even beings which could be called anti-psykers, Human Untouchables [1] and Necron Pariahs . [5] Due to their use in the armies of Man and their relative abundance in the Imperium's enemies, the Imperium has devised a way to classify all psykers it may come across. [1] The average Homo Sapiens Imperial is judged to have an Assignment rating of Rho or Pi . These individuals cannot consciously or subconsciously draw power from the Immaterium and are not able to become possessed without outside psychic influence. As the vast majority of Mankind falls into this Assignment level, the common Imperial citizen poses little psychic security threat. [1]

Nevertheless, uncommon individuals are birthed every day with Assignment ratings exceeding Pi . By Imperial Edict, these men and women are to be discovered and brought to the attention of the Inquisition to protect against harmful psychic events. With the multitude of threats besieging the Imperium, however, it is only truly practical to investigate those suspected of Iota level talent or greater. [1]

In the rarest of all cases, the twenty-four point scale of the Assignment does not adequately characterize a being of indescribable ability. Such individuals, for all intents and purposes, pass beyond the scale entirely. These subjects are known as belonging to a “plus” scale or a “reversed” scale, since the standard grading's naming convention is reversed. [1] When uncontained, plus psykers represent an immediate and catastrophic threat to the Imperium. In theory, there is nothing that a trained plus psyker cannot accomplish through force of will; from snapping a Titan in half to summoning a legion of Greater Daemons . A rogue plus psyker represents a great danger, the Ordo Hereticus of the Inquisition considers them among the greatest threats they can face. Their souls are poetically said to burn akin to supernova within the Empyrean, a beacon for daemons flocking and vying for the right to possess their unguarded minds. [6b]

Although rarely used, a precise terminology for a negative psionic, carries a "-Minus" at the end, a psionic of negative class Omega is thus properly called an Omega-Minus psyker. [7]

List of psionic levels

The below lists denotes the points of the Assignment, with their provided description. [1]

Numbers in brackets are not associated with the approved terminology, and exists within the table to illustrate a cardinal order of the terms, with 0 denoting the first psionically inert level, negative numbers indicating negative psionic levels, and numbers with plus indicating plus scale levels.

• 1 : The Inquisition (Background Book) , pg. 67
• 2 : Warhammer 40,000 2nd Edition Rulebook , pg. 72
• 3 : Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium (Box Set) 's Rulebook, pg. 4
• 4 : Codex: Tau (3rd Edition) , pg. 7
• 5 : Codex: Necrons (3rd Edition) , pg.17
• 6a : pg. 123
• 6b : pg. 125
• 7 : Atlas Infernal (Novel) , Act III, Canto II
• 8 : Codex: Assassins (3rd Edition) , pg. 5
• 9 : Eisenhorn (Omnibus) , pg. 334 / Malleus (Novel) , Chapter Seven, pg. 144-145
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheAssignment2016

Film / The Assignment (2016)

Edit locked.

This film provides examples of:

• Asshole Victim : Everybody who Frank murders (except for maybe Sebastian, but even he's a jerk who threw away the money that his sister provided to pay his debt) are criminals whom he notes no one will miss.
• Attempted Rape : Post sex reassignment, Frank is nearly raped by the sleazy owner of the hotel that he was put in. Frank overpowers and beats up the guy, then flees the premises.
• Attractive Bent-Gender : Post unwilling sex reassignment, Frank appears in a very attractive female form (played by Michelle Rodriguez in both cases, though the first in makeup obviously).
• Big Bad : Dr. Rachel Jane, the main villain of the film, who's a mad doctor .
• Big "NO!" : Frank yells this after seeing he's been made physically female.
• Body Horror : Being made physically female serves as this for Frank, especially at first.
• Bond Villain Stupidity : Dr. Rachel Jane, instead of killing Frank (possibly after extended surgical torture) subjects him to an involuntary sex reassignment and leaves him alive that way, with ample ability to track her down. Later, when her mooks catch him, they also didn't search him at all it seems since they miss his hidden gun which he uses to shoot them after waking up.
• Crosscast Role : Michelle Rodriguez plays Frank, a male hitman (by means of a fake beard and some prosthetics initially) who's subjected to an Easy Sex Change by a Mad Doctor who wanted revenge on him because he had killed her brother. For the rest of the film, he looks like Rodriguez normally does (obviously the reason for this).
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check : If Jane could perform an Easy Sex Change that could make you look like Michelle Rodriguez , she should have been able to make enough money to buy whatever revenge she wanted.
• Easy Sex Change : It's unclear just how long, but within very little time Jane performs a full set of sex reassignment surgeries on Frank, altering his cheeks, throat, nose and genitals. This isn't possible, willing or not, as he'd need time for recovery from each one. There's no indication that he was held very long however. Of course, since he's played by Michelle Rodriguez , he comes out with her appearance (which is also implausible).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones : Dr. Rachel Jane is coldly indifferent to most people, and views them as simply test subjects. However, she still feels something for her brother, and sought out the hitman who killed him in revenge. That hitman in question, Frank, is also an example. He has a girlfriend he's obviously fond of, and takes care of a pit bull who'd been forced to fight. Additionally, he's got some close Latino friends.
• Evil vs. Evil : Frank is a hitman who freely admits he's bad and has killed many people. Dr. Rachel Jane, his nemesis, is a mad doctor who experimented on homeless people for medical research, and subjects him to involuntary sex reassignment for revenge when Frank kills her brother.
• Fan Disservice : Michelle Rodriguez as Frank shows full frontal nudity. However, as it's after he had been heavily bandaged and underwent extensive surgery, along with them being entirely unwilling procedures which freak him out, this is far less sexy than might be the case otherwise.
• Fanservice Extra : Near the beginning, Sebastian has a sex worker over in very revealing clothes. Frank's girlfriend Johnnie also appears briefly topless, and he interrupts one of his targets having sex with a naked Asian woman.
• Fingore : In the very last scene, it's revealed that Frank cut off Jane's fingers after shooting her (presumably so she couldn't do surgery ever again).
• Frame-Up : After shooting Jane's mooks , Frank makes it appear like her assistant killed them before being shot himself by putting the murder weapon into his hand. The police buy this, and don't believe her that he did it.
• Gender Bender Angst : Frank is very unhappy he was subjected to a forced sex reassignment, and even looks into a surgery that could at least somewhat undo this. However, he settles for vengeance against the mad doctor who did this instead as he's told it would never be the same.
• Gender Bender : Frank gets a full sex reassignment via magic plastic surgery , and the result is him then going from physically male to looking like Michelle Rodriguez (who played him in both cases).
• Get Out! : Frank yells this to one of his allies.
• Guns Akimbo : Frank wields guns in both hands multiple times during the film.
• Hitman with a Heart : Frank is shown to have a soft side. He's got some good friends, loves dogs (adopting one who'd been used for fighting) and displays genuine affection for his girlfriend.
• Hollywood Law : Dr. Rachel Jane is said to have been ruled incompetent to stand trial, so she's put into a mental institution instead, where a psychiatrist evaluates her to see if she's become competent (he decides she's not after attacking him). We see no indication she would be incompetent though, which simply means that they are able to understand the proceedings and aid in their defense. Jane is quite intelligent, so there's every indication she could do both of those things. Being ruled incompetent usually requires that a defendant be severely mentally impaired from disability, a mental illness, brain damage or senility.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard : After his unwanted sex reassignment, Frank gets back at Dr. Jane by mutilating her hands so she could never operate again .
• If It's You, It's Okay : After Frank's unwilling sex reassignment surgery, his girlfriend Johnnie has no problem continuing their relationship, suggesting this.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight : After his involuntary surgery, Frank tries to have sex with his girlfriend (having been made physically female). However, he isn't able to feel anything, and consults a doctor who tells him sensation won't come back for around six months.
• Mad Doctor : Dr. Rachel Jane is an arrogant though highly skilled surgeon with delusions of grandeur who's been stripped of her license for illegal experiments. After that, she operates illegally in an underground clinic, performing more experiments on homeless people for what she claims is advancing medical knowledge. However, when a hitman murders her brother, she subjects him to a sex reassignment both to punish and change him (supposedly) for the better. After he kills most of her employees, plus shooting her, in revenge, she's found out by the police and sent to a mental institution.
• Magic Plastic Surgery : Frank ( Michelle Rodriguez heavily made up to look male) becomes a female version of himself physically (Rodriguez as herself) after undergoing involuntary sex reassignment surgeries. This would in reality require long recovery time between each procedure and have visible scarring (the mad doctor who did it was just that good ).
• Male Frontal Nudity : Early on Frank shows this stepping out of the shower, perhaps to emphasize his appearance before he's given an unwilling sex reassignment.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman : Frank feels up his new breasts after realizing what's happened, while looking at himself in the mirror. He seems more repelled than anything however.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate : Dr. Rachel Jane was a surgeon whose unethical and illegal experiments meant she lost her license. This didn't stop her though-she just went underground with them. However, this is contrasted with normal psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Gales who's assessing her and considers what she did completely wrong and notes she betrayed her oath as a physician.
• The Needs of the Many : Dr. Rachel Jane says her experiments on homeless people were for this, to advance medical knowledge which would benefit millions. Their lives, in comparison, meant nothing to her.
• Pet the Dog : Literally when Frank kills a Russian dog fighter and adopts the pooch, due to having a soft spot for dogs. And again when he learns Johnnie's partly responsible for what happened to him, but is too in love with her to execute her, so he sends her off to Reno for safety and possibly a new life.
• Professional Killer : Frank Kitchen is a hitman, and the plot is sparked by him murdering Dr. Rachel Jane's brother over an unpaid debt he owed to criminals.
• Revenge : Dr. Rachel Jane wants revenge on Frank, the hitman who murdered her brother. So she gets a crime lord to kidnap him, then performs a sex reassignment (partly to "help" him in her view). He's horrified, then seeks revenge on her in turn, along with employees of the gangster who helped kidnap him for Jane, then them and also her mooks .
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge : After learning what was done to him, Frank goes after the criminal employees of gangster "Honest John" who helped Dr. Jane to do this, killing them off before he gets John himself, then Jane and her mooks after this. Jane survives, but is left stuck in a mental institution with no fingers, courtesy of Frank cutting them off.
• Tomboyish Name : Johnnie, Frank's girlfriend. It's unclear if this is short for anything. Aside from this however she isn't a tomboy at all in her appearance or actions.
• Understanding Boyfriend : Johnnie takes it to extreme heights, as she's completely unperturbed by Frank's new appearance, and has no questions or comments beyond noting how different he looks when she first sees him post sex reassignment. She stays with him afterward, completely accepting, without hesitation. It also seems she's entirely aware that he's a hitman, and doesn't mind at all. Then it's revealed that she was the one to set him up for the surgery in the first place at the behest of Dr. Jane, whom she'd been working for the whole time getting her the drugs for her experiments, and stayed around him to keep an eye on him.
• Understatement : Frank's girlfriend notes that he looks different after his involuntary sex reassignment, but makes no further comment. This is putting it very mildly. It's a wonder she recognized him. Before he had a beard and larger nose, as the most obvious examples.
• Villain Protagonist : Frank admits right in the opening voiceover monologue that he's a bad guy, and has probably deserved even more than what was done to him after he killed so many people. However, he isn't completely bad, and is seeking revenge on people that are on his level or even worse than him.
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The Evil Within Wiki

Welcome to The Evil Within Wiki . This wiki contains unmarked spoilers!

NOTE: The wiki is currently under maintenance.

The Assignment

• View history
• 2.1 Enemies
• 4 Concept Art

Chapter 1: An Oath

The Chapter opens up with Marcelo Jimenez's notes from one of his trials. He details the following:

They existed together, but each saw things in their own ways. It was as if each patient's consciousness filled in the blanks, creating their own reality.

- Test notes from Trial 716-AX

Dr. Marcelo Jimenez

Kidman is assigned to take on the mission of retrieving Leslie from the STEM. She enters the machine, and while in the forest she is attacked by Oscar Connelly and falls off a cliff. She then hears Mobius talking to her, and later attempts to use a keypad. The keypad does not recognize her, forcing her to find the computers to get access, dodging Haunted , Cadaver and the Shade on the way.

Ruvik appears later and traps Kidman. She is saved by Sebastian and Joseph, only for her and Joseph to fall through the ground, as in the main game. 

Chapter 2: Crossing Paths

The Shade attacks Kidman while she is trapped by fallen rubble. Joseph then turns into a Haunted and attacks Kidman. After she defeats him, the world changes and Kidman is brought back to a familiar location from her past. After getting past some Haunted and Cadavers, she finally finds Leslie and takes him to the church.

Ruvik appears and attacks Kidman by controlling Leslie. She points her gun at Leslie and both Leslie and Ruvik disappear. The Administrator then asks her what she is doing and tells her they need Leslie alive. Kidman responds that this is not possible and that they don't know what Ruvik is capable of. The Administrator chases her, forcing her to run. Once Kidman has escaped, the game ends.

Gameplay [ ]

The Assignment 's gameplay differs heavily from The Evil Within , as Juli cannot use any firearms throughout the DLC. The only tools at Juli's disposal are the Flashlight , Bottles , and on occasion, Axes . It is impossible to directly engage any enemies, so stealth is crucial to survival and the system has been updated to accommodate for the fact that Juli is unable to engage in open combat with the enemies for most of the DLC. Kidman can take cover and peek around corners, lure enemies by calling out from cover, throw bottles from cover, and open doors while crouching.

The Assignment also introduces a new gameplay mode called KURIYAMI, which disables all light in the DLC besides the flashlight. Enemy placements are still the same as they are on Survivor Difficulty

Enemies [ ]

• The Haunted
• The Shade and Cadaver were originally going to be featured in the main game.
• Kidman shares many animation rigs with Sebastian in the main game, though there were some new ones recorded that are exclusive to her.

Concept Art [ ]

• The Evil Within
• 3 Sebastian Castellanos

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The Assignment

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‘the assignment’: film review | tiff 2016.

Sigourney Weaver stars as a twisted surgeon and Michelle Rodriguez as the man she turns into a woman in Walter Hill's '(Re)Assignment.'

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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A demented pulp fiction about a brilliant surgeon who creates a Frankenstein monster by performing a sex change on the scumbag assassin who killed her brother, The Assignment (previously titled (Re)Assignment ) is, by any objective standard, a disreputable slice of bloody sleaze. But there’s also no question that veteran director and co-writer Walter Hill knows exactly what he’s doing here, wading waist-deep into Frank Miller Sin City territory and using genre tropes to explore some provocatively, even outrageously transgressive propositions. For longtime fans of the filmmaker, this Canadian-made low-budget revenge yarn will be embraced as Hill’s most entertaining and, on the terms it sets for itself, accomplished film in some time. It’s an instant cult item.

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In a public climate arguably more saturated with discussions of gender than ever in the history of the world, Hill and his co-screenwriter Denis Hamill make subversive creative use of the topic in ways that are both brainy and amusingly provocative. The catalyst for all the mayhem is genius, but now defrocked plastic surgeon Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver in intimidatingly imposing mode), whose revenge upon low-life hitman Frank Kitchen, who took out her brother, is to capture him and apply her expertise by turning him into a woman (Michelle Rodriguez); in a world where transgenderism is now an accepted fact of life, this is one example where it is neither voluntary nor desired.

The Bottom Line A deliciously transgressive and smart classic B movie.

Intercutting between Rachel’s interrogation by shrink Dr. Ralph Green (Tony Shalhoub ) and the hatching of the now-female Frank’s extensive revenge-taking for what’s been done to him/her physically results in a great deal of exposition. But Hill keeps it lively and interesting, on one hand by supplying the brilliant Rachel with lots of blunt and high-toned commentary about how and why she’s done what she did; on an intellectual level, she and Hannibal Lecter would be an even match.

On the other, there’s the spectacle of watching Frank come to grips — and this is meant literally — with “her” own new body. Without any self-consciousness, Rodriguez enacts a thorough physical self-inspection from top to bottom, and her former tough guy character remains infuriated by having been deprived of the equipment he used to enjoy. All the same, she eventually reconnects with a young nurse and part-time good-times girl (Caitlin Gerard) “he” had hooked up with just prior to his unwanted conversion.

A good part of the action involves the extensive revenge Frank exacts upon a local San Francisco gangster, Honest John (Anthony LaPaglia ), for an earlier betrayal; plenty of bad guys get blown away here in bloody fashion, and Frank really is remorseless. In this world, much of it set in San Francisco’s Chinatown (actually shot in Vancouver), everyone is guilty — or, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven , everyone’s got it coming.

Hill, production designer Renee Read and cinematographer James Liston immediately establish and then maintain the look of a seedy urban world defined by dirty browns and blacks, as well as by dimly lit streets, a lonely diner and a seedy old hotel; this is as noir as it gets these days. On numerous occasions, sequences end with visual punctuation courtesy of graphic comics-style illustrations.

The somber tone and low-end production values may not be exactly in tune with young neo-noir enthusiasts, but more seasoned fans of the genre and the filmmaker will recognize and embrace Hill’s use of noir to play with and comment on topical issues in a deliciously subversive way, political correctness be damned. At the same time, however, a witty intellectual loftiness hovers over everything thanks to the erudite remarks ceaselessly pouring from the mouth of Weaver’s doctor, who likes to confound her interrogator with frequent references to Shakespeare.   

Weaver’s terrifically articulated performance neatly establishes the top side of the film’s high/low dynamic. For her part of the equation, Rodriguez, with momentary exceptions, maintains a virulent charge of fury, anger and disgust with what’s been done to him/her, something that quite plausibly drives the vengeful mission. It’s a story of two killers, one of whom operates from the brain, the other from more basic instincts, and together they’re quite a pair for one movie.

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation)

Production: SBS Films

Cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Tony Shalhoub , Anthony LaPaglia , Caitlin Gerard, Sigourney Weaver

Director: Walter Hill

Screenwriters: Walter Hill, Denis Hamill

Producers: Said Ben Said, Michel Merkt

Director of photography: James Liston

Production designer: Renee Read

Costume designer: Ellen Anderson

Editor: Philip Norden

Music: Giorgio Moroder , Raney Shockne

Casting: Sheila Jaffe , Candice Elzinga

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The Assignment

Where to Watch

Michelle Rodriguez (Frank Kitchen) Tony Shalhoub (Dr. Ralph Galen) Anthony LaPaglia (Honest John) Caitlin Gerard (Johnnie) Ken Kirzinger (Nurse Becker) Darryl Quon (Jin Tao) Brent Langdon (Dr. Turley) Sigourney Weaver (Doctor Rachel Jane) Caroline Chan (Ting Li) Adrian Hough (Sebastian Jane)

Walter Hill

After waking up and discovering that he has undergone gender reassignment surgery, an assassin seeks to find the doctor responsible.

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Walter hill’s the assignment is a pulp fairy tale without a clue.

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• Tomboy, a Revenger's Tale
• (Re)Assignment

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• See all credits
• "A deliciously transgressive and smart classic B movie."  Todd McCarthy : The Hollywood Reporter
• "[It] gracelessly mashes together hardboiled crime-melodrama cliches and an unintentionally funny 'Oh no! I'm a chick now!!' gender-change narrative hook."  Dennis Harvey : Variety
• "The filmmaker’s touch is completely lost here, and the only danger the film winds up posing is to the time spent by those who choose to watch it."  Kevin Jagernauth : The Playlist
• "The film's dialogue is entertainingly hard-boiled, and the performances knowing without ever being arch."  Keith Uhlich : Slant
• "Walter Hill (...) has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn’t quite live up (...) to its borderline sleazy premise (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"  Peter Sobczynski : rogerebert.com
• "Gender-switching hitman thriller is staggering misfire (...) a strong contender for 2016’s worst movie (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"  Benjamin Lee : The Guardian

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“ The Assignment ” is a film that arrives in theaters having already inspired vast outpourings of anger from two groups —the transgender community, which appears to be offended by its very premise, and action buffs, who are put off both by the premise (albeit for different reasons) and what they feel is a lazy execution that fails to offer the requisite thrills. While I am sympathetic to the complaints of both groups (somewhat more for the former) and recognize that it is indeed deeply flawed in many areas, I cannot quite agree with either. This is a modestly scaled B-movie by one of the best genre filmmakers of our time, Walter Hill , that has enough skill and personality going for it to make it worth checking out, even if it doesn’t quite live up (or down, depending on your perspective) to its borderline sleazy premise.

And what is that premise, you ask? In a nutshell, Frank Kitchen ( Michelle Rodriguez … just keep reading) is a ruthless San Francisco hitman who runs afoul of Dr. Rachel Kay ( Sigourney Weaver ), a brilliant but deranged surgeon who has lost her license for conducting various rogue experiments. Frank kills Dr. Kay’s brother, and the good doctor seeks vengeance and experimental research into the importance of physical identity on the psyche. She arranges with crime boss Honest John Hartunian ( Anthony LaPaglia ) to have him grab Frank and bring him to her secret lab, where she proceeds to perform gender reassignment surgery on him. Dr. Kay asserts that the surgery will take away Frank’s desire to kill. Needless to say, Frank sees things a little differently, and, once she discovers that the surgery cannot be reversed, she methodically hatches a grisly revenge plot on everyone involved with her transformation from Honest John and his goons all the way up to Dr. Kay. Helping Frank in her quest is Johnnie ( Caitlin Gerard ), a nurse with whom Frank had a one-night stand before his transformation and who doesn’t seem particularly nonplussed by recent developments, though it seems that she may be harboring a few secrets of her own.

At first blush, one can easily understand why the transgender community might be a tad put off by the very existence of “The Assignment,” but the actual film is nowhere near as offensive as it might initially seem. For one thing, the film as a whole is so willfully and deliberately pulpy in tone (I could easily see a short version of this tale fitting perfectly into the confines of a “ Sin City ” film) that it is hard to take the alleged provocations on display with any degree of seriousness—this is a film that is so archetypal in nature that the sort-of sweethearts at its center are literally named Frank(ie) and Johnnie. Additionally, to suggest that Frank is meant to represent all transgender people is nonsense because he is clearly not one himself, and, outside of the obvious physical construct, little about him changes after undergoing his forced surgery. I would also point out that no less of a filmmaker than Pedro Almodovar used the notion of unwilling gender reassignment surgery as a plot point in his own unabashed genre exercise, “ The Skin I Live In ,” and no one seemed especially put off by it even though the deployment there was arguably more questionable from a taste perspective than what is seen here.

That said, “The Assignment” is still a problematic work in many ways from a purely cinematic perspective. The screenplay by Hill & Denis Hamill (which Hill has been toying with since the late ‘70s) is an awkward construction with much of the story presented in a series of flashbacks, as the now-incarcerated Dr. Kay recounts the story to another psychiatrist ( Tony Shalhoub ). This concept is especially problematic since Hill is at his best when he allows characters to define themselves purely through their actions instead of relentlessly explaining themselves as they do here. The film also screams out for a more overtly stylized visual treatment in the vein of something like his great “ Streets of Fire ”—a fact underlined by the occasional bits of black-and-white photography and comic book-style transitions—that might have also helped to underscore the kind of pulpy approach Hill was clearly going for. Another big problem, at least at first, is the casting of Michelle Rodriguez as Frank. There is nothing wrong with her performance but the early scenes in which she portrays the male version of Frank, complete with a wildly unconvincing beard and a lingering close-up of his genitalia for good measure, do inspire a few bad laughs right when the film is trying to establish itself. For some viewers, it may never recover from that.

For those who can get beyond that, “The Assignment” contains plenty of points of interest. Sigourney Weaver is pretty much a blast throughout as the snidely condescending doctor who sets all of the events into motion. As for Rodriguez, once she sheds the beard, her performance improves greatly. Obviously, we know she can do the steely-eyed badass stuff as well as anyone else but she also gets a couple of quieter moments amidst the chaos where she displays a more vulnerable side without stepping out of character—in one, she consults a doctor about whether the surgery can be reversed and begins shyly inquiring about certain personal details regarding her new equipment. In the other, she is about to go to bed with Johnnie when she realizes that she has no idea of how to approach lovemaking from a female perspective. (“You’ll do fine,” she is reassured in a line that is both funny and strangely touching.) As for Hill, while he is clearly working with a lower budget than usual here (with Vancouver substituting, not too convincingly, for San Francisco), he is still able to establish a convincingly noir attitude toward the material and the scenes of violence are done in a spare and economical style that is a relief from the over-the-top pyrotechnics of most current action films. (He also gets bonus points for employing Giorgio Moroder to deliver a cheerfully retro synth score.)

It is easy to see how the dramatic excesses of the plot could prove offensive to the transgender community, though I can just as easily see “The Assignment” one day becoming a cult favorite in the way that the once-controversial “ Cruising ” would eventually find some fans within the gay community that once scorned it. As an exercise in unapologetic pulp fiction, it gets the job done in a smart, efficient and slyly subversive manner. As the latest entry in the Walter Hill filmography, it definitely belongs on the second tier. Even though it may not be the equal to a classic like “ The Driver ” or “Streets of Fire,” it will do until that next masterwork does come along.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film Credits

The Assignment (2017)

Rated R for graphic nudity, violence, sexuality, language and drug use.

Michelle Rodriguez as Frank Kitchen / Tomboy

Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Rachel Kay

Tony Shalhoub as Dr. Ralph Galen

Caitlin Gerard as Johnnie

Anthony LaPaglia as Honest John Hartunian

Paul McGillion as Paul Wincott

• Walter Hill

Writer (story)

• Denis Hamill

Cinematographer

• James Liston
• Phil Norden
• Giorgio Moroder
• Raney Shockne

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The Assignment (podcast)

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External links [ ].

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Expressions and operators

This chapter documents all the JavaScript language operators, expressions and keywords.

Expressions and operators by category

For an alphabetical listing see the sidebar on the left.

Primary expressions

Basic keywords and general expressions in JavaScript. These expressions have the highest precedence (higher than operators ).

The this keyword refers to a special property of an execution context.

Basic null , boolean, number, and string literals.

Array initializer/literal syntax.

Object initializer/literal syntax.

The function keyword defines a function expression.

The class keyword defines a class expression.

The function* keyword defines a generator function expression.

The async function defines an async function expression.

The async function* keywords define an async generator function expression.

Regular expression literal syntax.

Template literal syntax.

Grouping operator.

Left-hand-side expressions

Left values are the destination of an assignment.

Member operators provide access to a property or method of an object ( object.property and object["property"] ).

The optional chaining operator returns undefined instead of causing an error if a reference is nullish ( null or undefined ).

The new operator creates an instance of a constructor.

In constructors, new.target refers to the constructor that was invoked by new .

An object exposing context-specific metadata to a JavaScript module.

The super keyword calls the parent constructor or allows accessing properties of the parent object.

The import() syntax allows loading a module asynchronously and dynamically into a potentially non-module environment.

Increment and decrement

Postfix/prefix increment and postfix/prefix decrement operators.

Postfix increment operator.

Postfix decrement operator.

Prefix increment operator.

Prefix decrement operator.

Unary operators

A unary operation is an operation with only one operand.

The delete operator deletes a property from an object.

The void operator evaluates an expression and discards its return value.

The typeof operator determines the type of a given object.

The unary plus operator converts its operand to Number type.

The unary negation operator converts its operand to Number type and then negates it.

Bitwise NOT operator.

Logical NOT operator.

Pause and resume an async function and wait for the promise's fulfillment/rejection.

Arithmetic operators

Arithmetic operators take numerical values (either literals or variables) as their operands and return a single numerical value.

Exponentiation operator.

Multiplication operator.

Division operator.

Remainder operator.

Addition operator.

Subtraction operator.

Relational operators

A comparison operator compares its operands and returns a boolean value based on whether the comparison is true.

Less than operator.

Greater than operator.

Less than or equal operator.

Greater than or equal operator.

The instanceof operator determines whether an object is an instance of another object.

The in operator determines whether an object has a given property.

Note: => is not an operator, but the notation for Arrow functions .

Equality operators

The result of evaluating an equality operator is always of type boolean based on whether the comparison is true.

Equality operator.

Inequality operator.

Strict equality operator.

Strict inequality operator.

Bitwise shift operators

Operations to shift all bits of the operand.

Bitwise left shift operator.

Bitwise right shift operator.

Bitwise unsigned right shift operator.

Binary bitwise operators

Bitwise operators treat their operands as a set of 32 bits (zeros and ones) and return standard JavaScript numerical values.

Bitwise AND.

Bitwise OR.

Bitwise XOR.

Binary logical operators

Logical operators implement boolean (logical) values and have short-circuiting behavior.

Logical AND.

Logical OR.

Nullish Coalescing Operator.

Conditional (ternary) operator

The conditional operator returns one of two values based on the logical value of the condition.

Assignment operators

An assignment operator assigns a value to its left operand based on the value of its right operand.

Assignment operator.

Multiplication assignment.

Division assignment.

Remainder assignment.

Addition assignment.

Subtraction assignment

Left shift assignment.

Right shift assignment.

Unsigned right shift assignment.

Bitwise AND assignment.

Bitwise XOR assignment.

Bitwise OR assignment.

Exponentiation assignment.

Logical AND assignment.

Logical OR assignment.

Nullish coalescing assignment.

Destructuring assignment allows you to assign the properties of an array or object to variables using syntax that looks similar to array or object literals.

Yield operators

Pause and resume a generator function.

Delegate to another generator function or iterable object.

Spread syntax

Spread syntax allows an iterable, such as an array or string, to be expanded in places where zero or more arguments (for function calls) or elements (for array literals) are expected. In an object literal, the spread syntax enumerates the properties of an object and adds the key-value pairs to the object being created.

Comma operator

The comma operator allows multiple expressions to be evaluated in a single statement and returns the result of the last expression.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser with JavaScript enabled. Enable JavaScript to view data.

• Operator precedence