A Bloody Mess
posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 in Movie Reviews
Historically, movies based on videogames aren’t very good. The filmmakers all seem to get so caught up in integrating videogame sensibilities into the movie that they forget about basic things like plot and getting good performances out of their actors. Unfortunately, Hitman is no exception to that rule. Timothy Olyphant plays 47, a hitman who was trained from childhood to be a perfect killer. After completing one of his missions, he finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy that has him becoming the target of Interpol, the Russian Secret Service, and even the agency he works for. He travels around Eastern Europe to try to find out who set him up and why.
There is merit to the ideas being presented in the plot, but it just isn’t told very well. The script is all over the place, feeling more like a random assortment of ideas pulled out of a hat than a cohesive story. The film just doesn’t seem very concerned about explaining things, and it really derails the entire experience. Things just keep happening, and for the most part, the audience won’t really know why to care. It’s like the film’s missing a bunch of scenes between plot points that develop the ideas and explain what’s really going on. Instead, it just feels like the characters are making strange choices.
Fans of the game will probably be disappointed as well by how quickly the movie just does away with the premise of the series and devolves into a run-of-the-mill action movie. While the games were about subtlety and completing missions without ever firing a gun, this movie is all about loud, ridiculous gunfights. To its credit, the film does impart a lot of style to those loud, ridiculous gunfights, but it isn’t nearly consistent enough to be compelling. There’s a lot of flair to the way the film is shot, but it sometimes gets in the way of storytelling. Hitman employs the shaky cam style popularized by the Bourne movies in its action scenes, but combines it with quick cuts. The end result is mostly just confusing.
The performances aren’t all that great, either. Timothy Olyphant has really fallen into a rut of playing these cold, emotionless characters. He’s capable of so much more, but he just doesn’t seem to be getting anything to work with. There’s hardly any depth to his Agent 47, and whatever development the character goes through isn’t very well explained. Olga Kurylenko is gorgeous, but she’s a terrible actress. It’s an absolute pain to watch her in some of the scenes.
Hitman just isn’t very good. It feels like it could’ve been good, with solid actors, some cinematic flair, and a videogame concept that could actually work on screen. But a subpar script pretty much ruined all that, and what we’re left with is a bloody mess.
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