...a better film than I was expecting, even if it doesn't do much beyond the ordinary.
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The filmmakers of the 2007 action thriller "Hitman" could always rationalize away the movie's shortcomings by saying it was based on a video game, after all. Practically all popular games wind up on the big screen at one time or another, and none of them have become particularly noteworthy successes. You say there's no plot, no character development, no credibility, no logical sense? Hey, it's only a video game.
What's more, we've seen a plethora of movies about hitmen--hired killers--in the last dozen years or so, with Luc Besson's "Leon, the Professional" (1994) among the best of the breed. Just don't expect anything in "Hitman" like the personality interaction, the sensitivity, the acting, or the spirit of "The Professional." This "Hitman" is mostly a trite, soulless concoction made strictly to satisfy the fans of the game. That said, "Hitman" is also a slickly made affair, with excellent production values, a good video-game feel, and a nice sense of pace. So it's actually a better film than I was expecting, even if it doesn't do much beyond the ordinary.
At one point Vin Diesel was set to play Agent 47, the story's lead character, but it didn't happen. Maybe he read the script. Instead, the part went to Timothy Olyphant, whom you may remember as the villain in "Live Free or Die Hard." I suppose one shaved head looks the same as another, although I see at IMDb that Diesel stuck around as one of the movie's executive producers.
Anyway, as I say, Olyphant plays Agent 47, one of many men that a supersecret organization known only as "The Organization" genetically engineered, enhanced, and trained from birth as professional killers, hired out to the world's governments (and, presumably, to anyone else who can afford them). These killer agents are so featureless, the Organization doesn't even give them names, only numbers. Therefore, Olyphant's character is plain, colorless, and nameless. Now, this might work in a video game, but on screen it just makes Agent 47 so distant we don't care a whit about him. Still and all, like the robotic Terminator in "T2" and "T3," from time to time we do see some glimmers of emotion in 47's otherwise expressionless demeanor; just not enough for us to want to see him again in a sequel.
Agent 47's newest assignment is to assassinate the President of Russia, Mikhail Belicoff (Ulrich Thomsen), and to do it very publicly. When he's accomplished the deed, his superiors tell him there is a witness to the shooting who can identify him, a young woman, Nika Boronina (Olga Kurylenko), that he must also eliminate. But when he finds Nika to kill her, he discovers one of his own people trying to kill him. He realizes he's been set up. So 47's job in the story is to find out who in his own outfit double-crossed him, with all the while an Interpol inspector, Mike Whittier (Dougray Scott), following him every inch of the way.
"Hitman" involves a great deal of chasing around, shooting, and setting off of explosive devices. The only trace of humanity or sensitivity comes from the girl, Nika, who pretty much saves the day insofar as offering any distinctive personality is concerned. Otherwise, both the movie and its characters are sterile in the extreme, with coincidences, exaggerations, absurdities, and clichés abounding in every frame. For instance, wouldn't you think that hitmen in black suits, red ties, completely bald pates, and bar codes tattooed on the back of their heads might--just might--look the tiniest bit suspicious? Not in this movie world.
And what the film lacks most of all is possibly what the video game lacks, too: a sense of humor. "Hitman" takes itself much too seriously. Compare, for example, another film released the same year, the aforementioned "Live Free or Die Hard," which was just as exaggerated, just as preposterous, and just as clichéd as "Hitman" yet managed to be a lot more entertaining, thanks to actors and filmmakers who saw the absurdities in the situations and exploited them, not for outright comic effect but for the pure fun of it.
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