Warning!
Contains spoilers!
A
superhuman hitman? How can this not be a great flick!?! Those not in
the know, Hitman is a series of mostly successful computer games with
one previous (poor) movie. Hours of sitting in front of a Play
Station while assassinating targets in hilarious ways has left me
with fond memories that mostly forgive the 2007 film. Well played
move makers! You have me in a good mood before I even fumble through
opening a pack of snacks in the dark.
After
decades of tests, a Soviet scientist has perfected the ability to
make better humans. When the small army of genetically superior
killing machines he has spent his life creating start being used to
kill people our scientist gets cold feet. He shuts down the program
and legs it. Years later, others are trying to replicate his work but
with little success. Now his daughter has appeared back on the scene
and they want her in custody to lead them to her farther. But a super
assassin from the program has been hired by someone else to also find
the scientist. He's smooth, he's baled, he's unstoppable. Its Agent
47.
I don't
like to think of myself as a film critic. I don't see everything and
I have to pay for what I do see. If anything I'm a film optimist. My
natural good nature combined with a mild financial investment in
ticket and M&Ms means I'm inclined to be on the side of the movie
before the opening credits. So when I start to sigh in the first ten
minutes, you can bet your bottom dollar sometin' aint going well.
Why? Tech wank. That's why. What is it? Its the first resort of the
oxgen-starved-in-the-womb script writer. Why have an interesting
story when a piece of fabulously absurd technology can solve
everything for you. This isn't stuff that has been MacGyverd up but
rather specific items that explode cars or shoot drivers remotely
without a shred of pace or sense of threat. In other words – bull
shit. Not a good start.
This is
an action film and guess what – there is some! But its all been
done before again and again and again. One chapter in a German
aerospace factory stands out for all the set piece kills using timing
and industrial machinery. That's about it. Can we please stop
spinning the camera and changing angle? I want to actually see the
fight scenes, not have an interview for NASA test pilot. “John
Wick” managed to focus on the action and the actor to let us revel
in the killers art. Don't get me started on slow motion, I'm just
going to skip right to random goons. Several times in the story bad
guys just turn up. Just like that. Why? Because some alarm has gone
off in the directors head saying we need to have a gun fight now or
the audience might have forgotten how cool Agent 47 is.
Agent 47
is played aptly by Rupert Friend. Frankly, I could watch him in other
action movies. Rather than the unendurably dower computer game Agent
47, he has the cold dead eyes of a killer. He has all the credentials
to join the long list of British born Hollywood baddies. The
excellent Ciaran Hinds plays the said Soviet scientists and seeing
such a well established actor introduced mid movie helped keep my
pulse above flat lining. But then the script. When farther and
daughter reunite after decades of separation I wanted to bang my head
against the wall. Who the hell wrote that? I would rather they had
just thrown knives at each other. It would have been less awkward and
bloody more appropriate! It was like they were talking at each other
and not to each other. The John Smith character (Zachary Quinto) adds
a half measure of sugar to this wall paper paste porridge and the
little shimmy he makes from helpful good guy to antagonist is worth a
half hearted gold clap.
This is
an action movie with barely a blip of excitement or originality. At
best it should be enjoyed on a TV in the background of your compound
where you and the others live by the 'true' constitution, polishing
your rifles and waiting for Obama or the other communists to come and
take them off you.
“Hitman:
Agent 47” manages to score one and a half Brian faces out of five.
Just.
