There are a few unbreakable laws in life. Tomorrow you will be older, Star Wars geeks get laid less than the average man (I know this from harsh bitter experience) and Video Game movies suck. Hey, I don’t make the rules… I just observe them. However, the most recent batch of trailers, clips and images from HITMAN gave me a brief glimpse of hope that maybe… just maybe this movie will have some decent entertainment value. Did it?
THE GENERAL IDEA
Hitman follows the story of a professional assassin who only goes by the name of Agent 47 (Played by Timothy Olyphant). 47 is a lethal killing machine who was trained since birth by a group called “The Organization” to be one of the world’s best assassins. 47 has killed hundreds of targets all over the world… but when instructed to assassinate the Russian President, 47 finds himself double crossed and becoming a target by the very organization he had been serving. Hot on his heals is an INTERPOL Agent (played by Dougray Scott) who has been pursuing him for 3 years.
THE GOOD
The film has a beautiful style to it. Fans of the video game will certainly appreciate much of the art direction, cinematography and costumes. I swear I think they went out of their way to ensure the back of Timothy Olyphant’s head (It’s tattooed with a barcode… not exactly the best way to blend in) was on camera even more than his face was. But even that was done in such a way that made the shots look quite cool, and was a tip of the hat to the game fans to feel the essence of the visuals from the game itself.
Olga Kurylenko plays the would be love interest… and I know this comment has little to do with the artistic benefits she brought to the film… but HOLY CRAP IS SHE HOT. Whenever the camera had a close up of her stunning eyes, I would temporarily forget where I was. She’s also naked for half the movie, but that’s neither here nor there. But it should also be mentioned that even though the material she was given to work with was laughable most of the time, she was almost able to salvage it. Which leads us to….
THE BAD
The dialog in this movie was outright PAINFUL at times. As Doug and I sat in the theater, I counted no less than 5 times we silently turned to each other with a “Did they really just say that?” look on our faces. It’s a video game movie so Shakespeare isn’t required … but at least have dialog that isn’t SO bad that it becomes a distraction.
The story is one that’s been done a hundred times just in the last couple of years alone. The killer/assassin is double crossed by those they work for and they themselves become the target (Shooter, Art of War, ect..). It was pretty predictable and didn’t bring much new to the table.
MAJOR inconsistencies. For example (and this doesn’t give anything away), 2 police officers are talking about a guy who was just killed “3 hours ago”… then they turn on the tv and hear a reporter talking about the SAME GUY, who’s funeral is TOMORROW since he died 2 DAYS AGO. Also, at one point in the film 3 other assassins from The Organization come to kill 47. Got that? They all come together with the same goal of killing agent 47… but for some reason when they all reveal themselves, they’re all pointing guns at each other. Yes, it made for a cool looking shot, but it made no sense whatsoever. As soon as the fighting started, they’re on the same side… but thought it was important to strike a cool looking pose and have each gun pointing at a different person… even if that other person is ON YOUR TEAM. Dumb.
Someone needs to tell the director that just because someone is shooting a gun, that doesn’t mean it’s “action”. For all the bullets and all the killing, there was next to no action (unforgivable in an Action Video Game Movie). Don’t get me wrong, there were one or two pretty decent scenes, but that’s about it. The rest of the time was 47 in slow motion just pointing his gun and pulling the trigger. YAAWWWNNN.
As much as I like Timothy Olyphant, he was terribly miscast. Doug said it best to me walking out of the theater: “Even when 47 was supposed to be acting awkward, he looked awkward acting awkward”. Very true. There was no conviction in the lines, he looked too pretty to be a weathered killer, and you just never bought into the idea that he was this leathal killing machine that 47 is supposed to be.
OVERALL
What can I say? It’s a video game movie… and it’s not good. Some nice cinematography and crazy hot naked female lead just aren’t enough to make up for a weak story, poorly done action, painful dialog and overdone story line. Certainly not the worst video game movie ever made, but that’s not saying much. I give Hitman a 4 out of 10.
View the Hitman review here:
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