“Hitman: Agent 47” isn’t as legendarily bad as some other movies based on video games.
And that’s unfortunate, because at least then it would have been memorable.
“Hitman,” based on the long-running video game franchise of the same name, focuses on the titular Agent 47 (Rupert Friend), a man who was genetically programmed by a secret government project to be smarter, stronger, faster and have no emotions in order to become the perfect assassin. In order to track down Dr. Litvenko, the scientist who created the project, he teams up with Litvinko’s daughter, Katia (Hannah Ware), who is also programmed to have vaguely defined powers of observation and precognition. Together, they have to find her father before an evil syndicate, literally named Syndicate International, tracks him down to make their own army of assassins.
The whole film feels like someone had the bright idea to take an upcoming game from the series and make it into a movie. The plot is a paper-thin excuse for the main characters to sneak around and kill people in exotic locations in sequences that feel like they should have a “level clear” screen at the end. The character pieces feel like short cutscenes in between the action pieces, and Friend portrays 47 as an emotionless killing machine, like he is in the games.
All these things might have made for a fun game. Unfortunately, it makes for a dull film. Forty-seven is an untouchable, murderous cardboard box who never seems to be in any real danger, to the point where he deliberately takes a bullet near the end and comes off none the worse for wear. It makes it very hard to believe that fellow super-assassin John Smith (Zachary Quinto) is a credible threat, despite Smith’s technobabble-enabled bulletproof skin.
Katia exists for the male characters to jerk around. People are constantly abducting her, dumping plot exposition on her, and dragging her to different locations. Her pseudoscientific psychic powers serve to move the plot forward, and then mysteriously stop working so someone can abduct her again. On the plus side, she gets to participate in action scenes, especially the last one. She also isn’t set up as a love interest to any of the characters, although she is still used for fanservice in a handful of very short scenes that add nothing to the plot.
The biggest problem with the film is it just isn’t any fun. Films like “The Avengers” proved heavily computer generated fight scenes can still work if you care about the characters, and Schwarzenegger proved in the ‘80s that a nigh-immortal main character could still be entertaining with enough cheesy one-liners, but “Hitman” only offers flat characters and a poorly-written script that takes itself too seriously.
This film is actually a reboot of the franchise, as the previous attempt to make a film of the property made such a small dent in the box office that they restarted the concept in the very next film.
Unfortunately, this one likely won’t do any better. The filmmakers were so determined to keep close to the games that they apparently forgot watching a video game is nowhere near as fun as actually playing it.
