Hitman

Hitman is a stealth third-person video game franchise created by Danish developer IO Interactive and has been a successful ongoing series since the year 2000. Being a story based around a genetically engineered hitman who is trained and constructed into one of the best assassins in the world, the games have been praised by its fan-base for its level design, game-play mechanics, and most importantly, the freedom to choose the manner in which you assassinate your target. This popularity meant the name of Hitman was prevalent enough to be turned into its own movie in 2007. But much like other games turned into films, the transition wasn’t so seamless. Out on his latest mission, the trained-from-birth super assassin who only goes by the codename Agent 47 (played by Timothy Olyphant) is tasked with killing the Russian president Mikhail Belicoff (played by Ulrich Thomsen). After seemingly completing the task, he is dumbfounded to discover that his contact says the mission was a failure and that Belicoff survived the attack. Suspecting that he is being set up by his own agency after another agent tries to kill him, Agent 47 tracks down a woman named Nika (played by Olga Kurylenko) who he was once ordered to execute under suspicions of her being a witness to his mission, but discovers she was Belicoff’s mistress and she tells him that Belicoff has been replaced by a body-double (the one who actually ordered the hit) and is now masquerading as him to be the President of Russia. Forced into being a part of this political conspiracy while also being tailed by the FSB’s (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) head officer, Yuri Marklov (played by Robert Knepper) and Interpol agent, Mike Whittier (played by Dougray Scott), Agent 47 plans to finish off the phoney Russian President once and for all this time. Hitman as a film was slammed by critics, but surprisingly was a box office success, grossing 101.3 million against its 24 million budget. Despite this, considering the film’s sequel was cancelled in favour of a reboot, it shows how much (or rather how little) strength this movie actually had.

A common trope in Hollywood is the failure of video game adaptations, with countless options of beloved gaming franchises being turned into films and subsequently hated for various reasons like lack of faithfulness, disconnection from the source material, a weak or ill-fitting cast behind and in front of the camera, or just not picking a game that works within the realms of movie-dom. With all these issues, one that comes to mind that greatly plagues this film in particular is the removal of the personal agency that players have when controlling a game as opposed to watching a film. The Hitman franchise seems to benefit greatly from its openness in how players are allowed to ‘’execute’’ their tasks, which can range from straightforward and gruesome or over-the-top and incredibly ridiculous. It adds a believable element of goofiness that wouldn’t sully the game’s otherwise gritty and mystery-based story line. When that element is removed from a franchise (like when it’s transformed into a watchable medium), the level of flowing tone is taken away and a franchise is often pigeon-holed into a specific tone. Case in point, any sense of light-heartedness, creativity, or fun is completely absent from this film, instead relying on a more by-the-numbers generic ‘Jason Bourne’ atmosphere and tone that paints this environment as bland and as personality-less as it could be, not helped out by awful directing and writing. The director for this film, Xavier Gens, is a French director whose filmography mainly consist of smaller independent films or horror movies, showcasing a specific style for certain films, but not so much for this film (which was only his second ever directing job). This movie is aimless and impossible to follow with a narrative barely held together by lame cliches and tropes or unexplained plot points that are either thrown in as expositional lines or never fully explained entirely. This is worsened by the screenplay written by Skip Woods whose track-record in writing has proven incredibly disastrous with pictures like Swordfish, X-men Origins: Wolverine, The A-Team and A Good Day to Die Hard, which explains the film’s aimless narrative, awkward exposition, and lack of character whatsoever.

The characters in this movie come across as any other random character trope that you would find in this kind of story with no variety whatsoever. This is made even worse due to having an already existing source material to base character on (which this movie seems to take no names from) and even if anything is consistent from the games portrayal, the lack of context and proper dedication to creating proper characters means that its worthless regardless and just leaves a cast with no chemistry or identity, and no one suffers this more than the main character. Agent 47 does have an iconic look (with the bald head, almost albino skin color, and black suit and red tie combo) and most fans of the games seem to really hold him in high regard for his monotone emotionless persona, his mysterious past and his brutally effective methods of assassination. However, this portrayal is simply garbage, taking a role that seems to still be flat in parts but carries some interesting features, and turns in a main lead with zero personality, zero intrigue, zero relatability, zero consistent writing and zero qualities that make him engaging to watch. His flawless method of disposing of people is more boring due to the minimal connection with the audience, his backstory is barely explained and uninteresting at that, his goals and motivation seem incredibly loose and confusing throughout the entire film (even after he’s committed the act), and Olyphant’s portrayal makes him more of an annoying big-headed brat than a qualified killer. His design makes him stick out like a sore thumb, his writing is pathetically generic, his kills aren’t anything that creative, and he’s not emotionless enough to be mysterious and detached but also not expressive enough to have a defined identity, it’s the worst of both worlds. The villain as an actor seems passable but is given nothing to work with, The Interpol agents aren’t enjoyable to watch and its hard to gage if they’re good or not in a bad way, and Nika is just treated like a piece of meat that 47 treats awfully throughout their time together (which of course results in her falling in love with him).

Considering it’s a game based around being a hitman, it makes sense that there would be a lot of violence present in this film and a majority of said violence is quite underwhelming. It doesn’t help that the movie is surprisingly limited in action, only really having two proper fights in the entire film, but whenever that action is shown, its passable but nothing amazing. There is some decent choreography involved from Grégory Loffredo and a fight in the middle involving four guys with swords does have good build-up to it, but what really stands out is that most of these action set-pieces feel like they aren’t even proper showcases of what Hitman is best known for, the kills that involve stealth. As previously mentioned, this film feels like it wants to go for a more straightforward ”James Bond” kind of espionage story, rather than an actual espionage story that would involve actual stealth, and that can be felt with how the movie seems incredibly disinterested in being discrete and creative with what could be done with a more quiet less dramatic sense of bad-guy take downs, and is more interested in copying other popular spy-based movies (regardless of how non-discrete they actually are by nature). Because that element is not showcased in this film (at least to the level of engagement that the games have proven it to be), it completely casts aside that aspect of itself and feels less faithful to its source material. The era the film was made in also shows its roots from time to time in regard to some of its technicals, with the editing and lighting giving off a heavy 2000s feel with the rapid jump-cuts, harsh lighting that often flairs in the background, and even instances where the film will jump-cut to the same scene in order to make the moment feel more ‘engaging’.

As would be expected, Hitman was not a good film nor was it a faithful showcase of the franchise its based on. It’s a shame that most of these video game adaptations very rarely fail in an entertaining manner so that at least some joy can come from just a failure in execution, but instead they mostly either play it super safe and result in a boring project or just create their own thing and completely miss or even upset the fans that they should be trying to win over (Resident Evil has failed THREE TIMES in that department). Upon viewing it, its not like it’s a film that will have a lot of grunts and groans unless you’re a hardcore fan of the franchise, but this movie brings so little good to the table that it’d be better to just leave it forgotten like the rest of the world when they made the reboot (which was also not very good ironically). Things are much better now in regards to video game adaptations, so let this be another reminder of what can happen when it strays far away from what it actually is. It’d be best to return to killing fools with poisoned muffins and tossing them out castle windows because this mission is one that is best left terminated.