I’ve always enjoyed the “Hitman” series of games. Playing a bald assassin with a barcode tattooed on the back of his head, you travel to exotic locales, meet interesting people, and then kill them. Sounds like fun, yes? Kinda like being in the army, only with much better pay.
Much to my surprise, I also enjoyed “Hitman,” the film adaptation of the video games. It’s a glossy, plot-heavy actioneer that does more than expected in the process of pleasing fans of the games, along with whoever else wanders into the theater.
Timothy Olyphant takes the title role, originally meant for Vin Diesel. Raised from birth by a shadowy organization with a lot of time and money on its hands to be a perfect assassin, he doesn’t have a name, but a number: 47. Presumably he has some sort of alias to put on his passport, but we never learn for sure.
After an assignment that sees him putting a bullet through the nasal passages of Russia’s West-friendly president (how nice that would be), he turns on the news to discover that his target, or someone who looks like him, is still breathing and speechmaking. After withstanding an assault from a Russian SWAT team, 47 sets out to discover who set him up, taking Nika (Olga Kurylenko), a sex slave with key information, along for the ride.
The plot, which sees an Interpol agent (Dougray Scott) pursuing 47 all over Europe becomes much more complicated than necessary. But I suspect that most audience members aren’t expecting a killer story, just a story about a killer, and in that department “Hitman” delivers.
It’s a capably acted film, with Olyphant imbuing 47 with just enough sympathy to be likeable, yet keeping him vicious enough to be threatening. 47 even has a sense of humor, a nice touch in a contract killer. On the other side, Kurylenko does well enough with a stock role that many of the best scenes are about the awkward relationship between the two.
47 doesn’t seem to have ever been taught anything about sex and love, and she seemingly picks up on this. At one point, Nika asks him to spare the life of that Interpol agent, and to our surprise, he does. We then realize that 47 has probably never had a woman ask him to do anything before, so how could he say no? When she attempts to seduce him, he responds by hitting her with a tranquilizer dart, not because he doesn’t like her, but because he probably wouldn’t know what to do.
Those not interested in the romantic escapades of a virgin mass-murderer will be happy to find a few good action scenes. Director Xavier Gens doesn’t butcher the violence with dozens of quick cuts, but demonstrates enough patience to just let us see what the hell is going on.
The many scenes that stray from 47’s course aren’t even remotely interesting, although we’re usually rewarded when it returns. The visuals are often pretty and the bloodletting plentiful, enough so that at least 90 of the 107 minutes are justified.
Although the video games actually reward silent murders made to look like accidents and low-body counts, the screen 47 prefers shootouts and explosions, which are admittedly more entertaining to the target audience. While few would consider the sub-genre of video game to film adaptations to be littered with cinematic gems, we can lament the misses and enjoy the occasional hit, pardon the pun.
3 out of 5
