Sex reassignment thriller causes waves at Toronto film festival (WTF were they thinking?)

[icymist]

The director and star of a film about a hitman who is put through gender reassignment surgery by a relative of one of his victims defended the project as it had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday.

&quot re)Assignment" stars Michelle Rodriguez as an assassin named Frank Kitchen. After killing the brother of a brilliant but deranged surgeon, Kitchen is captured and awakes to find himself unwillingly turned into a woman.

The premise drew criticism from some in the transgender community, who said the medical procedure should not be used as a sensationalistic plot device. It was also called transphobic and exploitative by Twitter users.

The film's challenges have not stopped there. Some early reviews have been very negative, with the Guardian newspaper calling it "a strong contender for 2016’s worst movie".

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-filmfestival-tiff-reassignment-idUSKCN11L05N

Is (Re)Assignment 2016's Most Offensive Movie?

Walter Hill's (Re)Assignment, a revenge thriller about a hitman who undergoes an involuntary sex change at the hands of a mad doctor, was dogged by controversy before it was even made, but many a great movie has been made from a premise that seemed ill-advised or worse. (Re)Assignment is not one of those movies. The only thing that keeps it from being as damaging as organisations like Glaad feared is that its plot its so fantastic and nonsensical that it never comes anywhere near the real world. It helps that it's so bad almost no one will see it.

(Re)Assignment, which Hill co-wrote with Denis Hamill, is framed through the institutionalised musings of Sigourney Weaver's Dr Rachel Jane, a back-alley megalomaniac who performs cut-rate gender reassignment surgery on the "unfortunates" who cannot afford a more reputable, less unlicensed surgeon. Her true passion, though, is the more speculative work she performs on unsuspecting subjects, the kind she can pay henchmen to snatch off the street and who won't be missed later. When hitman Frank Kitchen kills her beloved brother, the good doctor sees an opportunity to combine her vocation with her desire for revenge: She kidnaps Frank, knocks him unconscious, and when he awakes, he's been, at least physically, transformed into a woman, one who bears a strong resemblance to Michelle Rodriguez.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160913-film-review-is-reassignment-2016s-most-offensive-movie

I'm dumb-founded by this. You just can't take an adult male and turn him into a beautiful woman with a single operation!!! I don't know what's more offensive; the thought of belittling transgender people by using the condition as a form of punishment or Rodriguez claiming "Hey guys! I'm one of you! I do guys and I do girls!" Excuse me...

[Warpy]

1. It will sell to ignorant people who don't have a clue how long

the transitioning process takes and what sort of psychological assessment process would have weeded this guy out very quickly.

This book is best termed bum fodder.

[Loki Liesmith]

2. Stupid art

is the price we pay for good art.

Sometimes it is a very high price :/

[Oneironaut]

3. lolwut

This is so bad, it's funny.