Time: 100 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, Offensive Language & Nudity
Cast:
Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47
Dougray Scott as Mike Whittier
Robert Knepper as Yuri Marklov
Olga Kurylenko as Nika Boronina
Director: Xavier Gens

Raised from childhood by the mysterious Diana organisation, Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant) is the perfect killer, but when he is dispatched to kill the Russian president, 47 discovers that his employers have betrayed him. Taking prostitute, and possible witness to his last hit, Nika with him, the enigmatic assassin flees from both Interpol and the Russian secret service as he fights to uncover the root of the conspiracy.

I’m not too familiar with the Hitman games and hadn’t played much of them before watching both movies, but I knew about it, and more recently I had played the 2016 game titled Hitman. The Hitman video game series made quite an impact even just when it came out. So it’s not really surprising that it eventually received a film adaptation in 2004. The movie itself not really a good representation of the character and games for the big screen, but there have been way worse video game movies.

This script is written by Skip Woods of all people, and needless to say the writing is about as good as you’d expect from the man who wrote X-Men Origins Wolverine, Die Hard 5 and for whatever reason Hitman: Agent 47 (the other Hitman movie less than a decade later). I’ve only played one game but I’m pretty familiar with what the Hitman series is about, and I can definitely say that this movie isn’t accurate to the games. Agent 47 in this movie doesn’t act like one of those silent assassins like he was supposed to be in the game, he acts a lot more like the other types of assassins, the ones who are flashy, shoot a lot of people and look very ‘cool’. Plotwise, I barely remember what this movie is about. The plot is generic, convoluted and very difficult to follow, the dialogue is rather terrible too. There’s really nothing to connect with or to be excited by in the story. It’s just a rather bland action movie that so happens to have the Hitman and Agent 47 names attached do it.

With Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47, I can’t tell whether it’s a good performance from him or whether it’s a phoned in one (even though he has confirmed he just took this role for a paycheck), I guess he fitted the silent assassin role, but he also seemed a little boring. The characterisation of 47 wasn’t really the best. Despite being established as a cold blooded assassin, he makes certain decisions that aren’t in line with the character, and don’t really make much sense. The thing is it’s not just that they had a completely different portrayal, they get somewhat close to the character but yet miss in major ways. I guess a few of the supporting cast are fine enough. Olga Kurylenko also works a little bit in her role, especially considering she was placed in the role of ‘forced love interest’. The whole relationship between the two just didn’t work, it was very difficult to buy, even if the two actors share enough good chemistry. Dougary Scott is a police officer hunting 47 down, and Robert Knepper is a villain. They’re not great but I guess they do the job fine enough.

The direction by Xavier Gens wasn’t all that good, but I guess it wasn’t terrible either. None of the action scenes really fit Agent 47 as a character, a lot of him shooting multiple people with guns. Disregarding the video games however, the setups of them all are fine enough for an action movie. However a lot of the action scenes, especially one that took place in a train station, has too many cuts and so you couldn’t quite enjoy it as much. Not to mention they’re kind of just standard at best, not particularly exciting at all.

As far as video game movies go, Hitman isn’t amongst the worst of them. However there’s not really enough to the movie to make it worth watching, for both non fans and fans alike. It really missed the point of the games and the character, but putting that aside it’s a pretty mediocre action movie, and the action scenes aren’t even entertaining enough to make it necessarily worth checking out. I guess it’s a harmless enough movie though, so if you wanted to kill 90 minutes on a movie, Hitman I guess is okay.