Good start, but then it gets ruined

Good concept, poorly executed.

A Brilliant Conflict

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

There actually was an assassination Bureau, centered in London, steered from behind the scenes by the Monarchy, British Intelligence, and the Fabian Society. Its operational head was the exiled Russian prince, Peter Kropotkin, who fled Russia, and then Switzerland, and then suspiciously escaped from jail in Paris to find asylum in England. He was on the lam for his role in the assassination of Czar Alexander II, and as a leader of the "People's Will" anarchist organization, he was under a death sentence. He was the international head of the anarchist movement, replacing Bakunin, and steered the organization which assassinated 19 heads of state, Kings, Queens, Princes, Dukes and Archdukes, Prime ministers, and a President, during the years preceding WWI. Kropotkin was the controller of Emma Goldman (who lived with Kropotkin for a time in London) whose disciple, Czolgosz, shot McKinley. Kropotkin was with Emma Goldman when she met with Czolgosz at Jane Addams "Hull House" in Chicago in the week before Czolgosz made his way to Buffalo to shoot McKinley. King Umberto of Italy was shot the year before by Antonio Bresci, member of Goldman's anarchist chapter in Paterson NJ. Goldman met with Bresci weeks before he went to Italy to shoot the King, financed by money raised by the members of the chapter. Go through the history of the political assassinations during the run up to WWI, mostly done by anarchists, supposedly acting alone. It was all organized by British Intelligence out of London, directed by Kropotkin and his networks.There are many allusions to the actual real story in the film, for those, who, like a previous reviewer who touched on this, actually know some history.

The film is done with a loopy goofy comic style very akin to live theatre with winking and mugging to the camera to make sure that the audience gets the conceit beneath the story. There is a nice moment when the Madame of a brothel welcomes Dragomiloff in disguise as a new client when she says "You'll be one of our best known unknown visitors". It is the ideas at work to center the film that gives it its appeal but this doesn't really allow a movie like this to succeed, which is probably why the producers applied such an artificial style. The flow of ideas is likely to leave the average viewer a little fuzzy-minded (I found myself losing consciousness from time to time), but the payoff is a well-done comic finale in a zeppelin, and a happy ending with love triumphing over all.This is one of the feature productions Diana Rigg did after her successful run as Emma Peel on the very popular British TV show "The Avengers", although it is not one of her best. Rigg is still funny in episodes of Ricky Gervais's "Extras" and her tongue-in-cheek performance of the leather clad secret agent on British TV is probably what everyone remembers her best for. Rigg was not the best dramatic actress and her best roles are stagy character types like Edwina Lionheart in Theater of Blood, and as Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper.

The big selling point of "The Assassination Bureau" is that it was based on an unfinished novel by Jack London -- "Unfinished" being an euphemism for "abandoned". Long after London's death it was finished by a lesser writer and that version is the basis for this movie.A superb cast, headed by Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg, is underemployed.Reed plays the chairman of the Assassination Bureau, Ltd. For a price, the bureau will undertake the homicide of deserving victims. Like a Star Chamber court they weigh each case by their own sense of justice.Rigg, an enterprising journalist, decides to end the bureau by approaching Reed for a hit. Reed accepts, only to discover she wants Reed to assassinate himself. Amused, he accepts. The bureau, he thinks, has become too mercenary, killing whether they've carefully weighed the justice of the murder or not.Bringing it before the Bureau, Reed suggests they clean house -- either they kill the chairman, or he kills all of them.And this is just in the first fifteen minutes.What follows is an episodic cat-and-mouse game and, like all episodic features, some episodes work better than others. The scenes in Switzerland and Vienna, for example, are remarkably uninteresting, while the scenes in Venice show flashes of brilliance. Best scene: Diana Rigg, swathed in only a towel, trying to discover whether there is a bomb in her room, whether it's just a clock, or whether it's altogether her imagination. The most embarrassing is an extended foray in a French bordello. Scrumptuous turn-of-the-century sets, far better than anything in similar period features like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", make for great eye-candy. The whole feature plays light-handedly, so its treatment of death never comes off even as black-comedic, as with the superior "The Wrong Box". To accentuate the joking element is the addition of a wacky late-sixties type song about love that makes the Carpenters sound profound. Silly as it is, and dull as it can be in spots, its high spirit is infectious. How much of it is Jack London, I don't know, but it's a far cry from "The Sea Wolf"

Many , many years ago I remember seeing a film that had The Master from DOCTOR WHO in it ( In fact many of the characters looked like The Master to me ) and the climax took place upon a zeppelin but I had no idea what the film was called untill today when BBC 2 showed THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU Well yes THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU does have a sort of late 1960s charm to it and is very very inoffensive and I can understand why many of the reviewers on this page like it but it probably won`t appeal to anyone half as cynical as me . I don`t suppose I can criticise the unconvincing banter between Oliver Reed`s hero and the baddies or point out how really crap the special effects and the back projection are can I ? Nope thought not I`m not an assassin . I`m a critic