Thursday, June 26, 2014

Video Game Movie Week: Hitman

Day 4 of Video Game Movie Week has arrived and aren't you kiddies excited??!!!   Well...  could you at least pretend to give a crap?   Sheesh, with that notion we will be moving into a villain's role.  Many will call this character an anti-hero, broken man or even the cliche social misfit but at the end of the day he does exactly what he was crafted for.  To assassinate and leave without a trace.  This is Hitman.

I didn't get fresh towels for my room!!!

Agent 47: Nika...
Nika Boronina: Yes?
Agent 47: Stop spoiling or I'll put you back in the trunk.






Now there will be a bit of a harsh vibe coming off of me and for that I can only apologize.  That being said our story opens with an unspecified location near an asylum housing a gathering of young boys with shaved heads, bar codes on the back of said head getting paramilitary training as a team of lab coated scientists and stark dressed military types look on.   With hand-to-hand combat training, firearms, rifles, SMGs, demolitions, garrote, melee combat, knives, creating mickeys or sedatives, staging murders to look like accidental deaths and infiltration tactics these lads grow up to be efficient trained killers.
Cut to scene where Interpol agent Whittier (Dougray Scott of Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Enigma, Mission: Impossible II, Love's Kitchen, Hemlock Grove and Last Passenger) conversing with 47 (Timothy Olyphant of Scream 2, Go, Gone in Sixty Seconds, A Man Apart, Deadwood and Justified) as 47 explains his life and his allegiance to a shadow paramilitary group known only as The Organization.

Love my scotch... scotchy scotchy scotch, down in my belly.














Three months ago 47 completed his mission of a gang leader/ kingpin in Niger.  His handler contacts him about another hit aimed at the Russian President(Ulirich Thomsen of The Celebration, Adam's Apples, The Thing, The Notebook and Banshee) publicly and graphically.  After the deed is done his employers contact him directly claiming a witness spotted him and she has to be taken care of as well.  Drawing one of his Colts (not an AMT 45 Hardballer, he said nitpicking) to gun down this woman, he quickly realizes she has never seen him before and goes to leave as a bullet narrowly misses him.  An assassination attempt on the assassin?

His employers tip of the FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) to his whereabouts so they can deal with him.  47 acquires a prostitute and the late President Belicoff's mistress Nika (Olga Kurylenko of Secrets, Max Payne, Quantum of Solace, The Assassin Next Door, Tyranny and Oblivion) and proceeds to interrogate the hell out of her until she coughs up that Belicoff had a body double who wanted the seat of power and through 47 he has it but it becomes clear in order for this coup to go smoothly they will be have to be removed from the equation.  Through a hail of bullets, body pummelings and explosions 47 clearly needs some help in return.


Now a few comments to make about the film.  Thanks to the re-tweaking of the writing, they went with a genetically enhanced Dark Angel theme rather than the cloned creations of the game series.   a impromptu sword fight breaks out on a speeding train which while interesting just looks like the producers saying," Hey, we already paid for the actors to learn dis, we're gunna film dis!"    Nika is basically just a knock-off of Mei Ling from the games who 47 saved a couple of times in order to get details on a mission in progress.

Timothy Olyphant to his credit delivers a cold blooded bastard and clearly he got some serious strength training and a martial arts package to say the least but he still looks too nice for the role.  You half expect him to give Nika a supporting hug.   Personally, for physicality, martial arts and a cold stare I would have gave this role to Vin Diesel but that's my take on it.

Not a great film, plot is underdeveloped,  no real character development, no sense of goals and just a little too Michael Bay with the action sequences.  Why some of the story-lines from the existing video game material was not used?  Not a clue.

The local library steps up its enforcement policies.

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