Reviews// Hitman (Movie)

The plot of the movie seems to be more complex than it needs to be while at the same time less clever than it should be. There are also sequences added on for little more reason than to pad the story out. A sword fight in a train station is the most obvious of these since it adds nothing to the story and actually interrupts the flow of the film for a few minutes. In addition, the "Is it? Isn't it?" love interest seems like a late re-write of the script designed to humanise 47 and make the audience more sympathetic towards him.


SPOILER WARING
It's also used as a plot device about half way through to stop 47 from killing Whittier after the writers managed to back themselves into a corner.
CONTINUE UNSPOILT

Apart from the clichés of the in media res beginning and the 'double-crossed agent must clear himself' plot line, the movie stacks up reasonably well as a part stealthy, part out-and-out action movie.

Olyphant is a passable 47, even though he lets a wide variety of emotions sneak out and, to be honest, looks way too young for the role. If I hadn't played the Hitman games, I'd probably have accepted the character as a slightly socially stunted gun for hire without any difficulty. However, 47 is more than simply a bit awkward around women (in the movie it's implied that he reads magazines to find out about how to deal with the fairer sex); he's an emotionless, conscienceless killer bred to have almost super-human abilities and trained to think of everybody else as objects.

So, a half-way decent movie that is based on a game series, but that ignores or changes most of the ethos of that series for no good reason that I can determine. Standard fare when it comes to Hollywood adapting videogames to the silver screen, but still disappointing. The movie industry has learned to do a reasonable job with comic book properties, why do games get such small consideration?

Hitman has a running time of 92m 36s and is rated BBFC 15 with the advice that it "Contains strong bloody violence and strong language" - there's also an extended sequence of frontal female nudity.

SPOnG Score: 56%

Conclusion
When compared to the likes of Super Mario Brothers, Wing Commander, Street Fighter or anything by Uwe Boll, Hitman is a decent movie based on a video game premise, but it fails to reach the accuracy levels of Tomb Raider or the atmosphere of Silent Hill and Resident Evil.