HITMAN: AGENT 47: 2 STARS. “a dull affair with too little personality.”
“Hitman: Agent 47” is about murder, mayhem, car chases and bullets but really, at the core of its dark little heart, it’s about family.
Based on the videogame series of the same name, the story begins in 1967 with the establishment of a top-secret government program to create the perfect killing machine agents with no fear, no remorse or humanity.
Cut to many years later.
A trio of three people are on the hunt. Katia (Hannah Ware) is searching for a man she sees in haunting, strange visions, while the genetically modified Agent 47 (“Homeland’s” Rupert Friend) and John Smith (Zachary Quinto) are looking for Katia. As it turns out, all are interested in the same end game, locating the father of the Agent program, Dr. Litvenko (Ciarán Hinds in a paycheque role). As their paths and allegiances crisscross the trio fight their way through a convoluted plot to contribute to cinema’s body count and come to a bloody climax
“Hitman: Agent 47” has all the assets you expect from a videogame movie. It’s the kind of film where the “hero” fights against seemingly insurmountable odds and walks away without breaking a sweat. It’s also the kind of movie where it is not enough for someone to get shot, they must also fall from a great height hitting things on the way down. There is stylized action and bad guys with sub dermal body armour.
Unfortunately there’s also enough bad dialogue for any two Ed Wood Jr. movies—it’s the kind of movie were people say, “What the bleep is happening?” as an excuse to forward the story with exposition—a non-twist—(BLAZINGLY OBVIOUS SPOILER) Litvenko is Katia’s father! OMG!—and a main character that makes Jason Voorhees seem like a barrel of laughs.
The whole idea of Agent 47 is that he’s a cipher, a relentless and lethal killer—imagine a human Terminator without the accent or bulging muscles and you get the idea—and the ironically named Friend pulls that off, but that is a big part of the problem here. It’s difficult to build a movie around a personality-free title character. It’s been done—think anything starring Taylor Lautner—but first time director Aleksander Bach doesn’t have the chops to keep a movie based on a blank slate interesting. “Hitman: Agent 47” has a few stylish moments and some big action scenes, but not enough to add enough personality to push this dull affair over the top.
