Thursday 24 September 2015

Hitman: Agent 47 (don't worry if you missed the other 46)

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.  

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