Violet and Daisy (2011)

“Is this an interview or a hit?”

            The description for Violet and Daisy on IDMB goes “Two teenage assassins accept what they think will be a quick-and-easy job, until an unexpected target throws them off their plan.” I was thinking the movie was going to be cheesy and silly with “two teenage assassins” and that what “throws them off their plan” was going to be something typical like it would turn out the guy was good and that the people they work for were going to come after them. It is rare that I am surprised with the story of the movie especially a newer one but I was with Violet and Daisy.

            Violet (Alexis Bledel) and Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) are fans of a singer named Barbie Sunday. The singer has come out with a new line of clothing and the girls desperately want a dress. The only way they can get the dress is if they take on a new job. Their boss wants them to do a new one because someone stole from them. Violet says no way because, as assassins, they just took out a whole bunch of heavily armed men and need some time off. As soon as Daisy hangs up the phone they realize they cannot afford the dresses with the little money they have and call their boss back that they will take the job.

            The girls are given the address of an apartment but when they get there their mark is not at home. They sit down on the couch. Violet falls asleep and eventually Daisy does too. As they are sleeping the person comes back and gently puts a blanket on them. Daisy and Violet are shocked to see a blanket around them. The man they are supposed to kill, Michael (James Gandolfini) is very nice to them. Violet calls a meeting with her partner. Already their conscience is in a state of confusion. They think of a plan to just kill him and get it over with it. Violet comes up with the plan to just close their eyes and go in guns blazing. They do just that but when their guns have been emptied and they open their eyes Michael is not in his chair where they left him. He comes out of the kitchen with fresh homemade cookies.

            Violet leaves Daisy alone with Michael while she goes to get more bullets. Daisy finds Michael to be a very good man. She is upset to hear that he is not close with his daughter. He had lied to his daughter about her mother cheating on him so she would not see her mother in a bad light. The mother unfortunately died in a car accident and the daughter thinks it was Michael’s fault for divorcing the mother. Michael talks to Daisy about what she does and if she is really as close as she thinks to Violet.

            While Violet is out she comes across members of a local gang that had once attacked her and threw her into a Dumpster. After their encounter Violet cries alone in an alley until she sees the sign for the hardware store where she is supposed to be getting bullets. She gets the bullets at the store but the store gets held up. Violet manages to get back to the apartment wearing a police badge on her jumpsuit. She explains that while she was in the back getting bullets the store got held up and the police were right down the street. The police came and a shootout happened. The badge came off an officer and landed on her suit. The gangsters who bothered Violet come to the apartment because apparently Michael pissed them off too. Daisy manages to outsmart the dumb men and Violet grabs their guns and kills them.

            Both girls come to really respect and, maybe even love, Michael. Daisy helps him write a letter to his daughter April telling her he loves her and that he is sorry for what happened between them. Violet figured out that Daisy has been firing blanks from her gun she is afraid to kill people. Michael wants Daisy to be the one to kill him. Daisy does not want to do that to someone she has come to care about. She has no choice she has to before her boss finds out they did not finish the job they were sent to do. Daisy shoots Michael just before the police come.       

            In the end Violet and Daisy get their dresses. Violet gets a call from her father who she has not spoken to in years. Daisy goes to find April (Tatiana Maslany) at her school to give the girl the Barbie Sunday dress she just bought. Daisy tells April her father loved her very much despite what she may have thought.

            Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan were very good together. Their acting was not too great but I think it was part of the characters and the way the movie worked. I work in a library in a town full of senior citizens. I had been wondering why the old people were taking the movie out until I saw that James Gandolfini was in it. I live in New Jersey and it is practically a law that everyone must like Gandolfini and watch The Sopranos. I have never really seen him in anything. I was too young when The Sopranos was on. I liked him in this he was good. All his scenes with Bledel and Ronan were great. The only reason I even considered watching this movie was because Tatiana Maslany is in it. I am currently in awe of this girl from her work on Orphan Black (which if you are not watching it you MUST you HAVE TO!! The show is ridiculously amazing). I had a feeling Maslany was not going to be in the movie much and she is not she is only in the last like three to five minutes of it when Daisy gives April the dress. I am guessing that April was supposed to be younger than Daisy which I find funny because in real life Ronan, at the time, was seventeen and Maslany was twenty-five. Maslany usually played girls younger than she really was, she just has the look of a much younger girl, well maybe more then, than she does now.

            Violet and Daisy was a very good movie. I liked the different story and the way it was told. The way it was told kind of reminded me of a Tarantino film. The story seems like a story the director would have told. It was not clichéd. The characters were still teenaged girls at heart who liked a singer and wanted her clothes yet they were a little out of their minds and dangerous assassins who also had feelings. Highly suggest seeing Violet and Daisy it is one of the most original movies I have seen a while.