nan | 楠木

Hitman, the movie adaptation of the video game franchise, is largely predictable and therefore forgettable. Add to that some of the plausibility issues (of course, in such a film one shouldn’t even expect a meaningful plot), and this film ends up being a prolonged video game trailer. But then again, that’s where it was always destined to be.

Timothy Olyphant, from Die Hard 4.0, plays Agent 47, the mysterious bald-shaved contract killer with a bar-code on the back of his head. In the video game this was cool in a geeky way, but on the big screen audiences who haven’t played the game will be very unforgiving at this. And that’s one of the flaws of the film – in staying true to its video game roots without the luxury of time that the game had in building up its character’s background (not to mention the much higher level of direct participation the gamer had), general audiences will be estranged with the film’s lack of reality.

In terms of the action, many have said that this is Bourne-ish, and of course the violence is excessive, which seems to be the norm nowadays. While I’m okay with Rambo doing that, as that at least serves a point, in this film the violence is just for the sake of violence. And of course a lot of it feels like video game material.

Anyhow – the film tracks Agent 47 as he gets mixed up in a political conspiracy in Russia. The plot is downright silly, which is to be expected, and by and large very uninteresting. It would have been much more interesting if the film followed the original game’s storyline, in showing how Agent 47 discovers his roots and overturns the Organization. But then of course, I guess that’s material they wanted to keep for the sequel.

The only interesting bits of the film were the nods to the video games. In one scene, we can actually see two people playing the game. In a few others, Agent 47 is in some of his trademark poses, direct from the video game posters. And really, that’s the only value this film offers – an ad for the game, which is far more interesting.

On a side note, it’s worth mentioning that in the original Hitman game, there were a lot of concepts borrowed from films. For example, the restaurant mission was a direct rip-off of no other than the great Godfather. And of course then there’s the tribute to Scarface - “say hello to my little friend!” It’s sad that the film doesn’t do the franchise justice, but at least the film industry is starting to pay tribute to the video game industry.

5/10