2008 Woodie Awards
"Hitman" is a miss
Alan Sharp
Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: Entertainment
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Twentieth Century Fox's new action thriller "Hitman" falls short on both action and thrills. Based on the popular shoot 'em up videogame series, the filmmakers manage to suck all of the fun and inventiveness of the game out of this movie. In short, it sucked.
The story is cliché and hack. A thin plot is OK as the set-up for a videogame, but you need a bit more substance if you're going to try and translate it into a feature film. A secret spy group takes infants and raises them to be cold-blooded super assassins (hence, the title). The killers aren't given names, they are just assigned numbers as identities. Complete with barcodes tattooed on the backs of their heads so they look like something stubbly in the produce section of Giant Eagle. This plot device was used a few years back in the Kurt Russell sci-fi actioner "Soldier." That movie was garbage, so at least the two films have more than one thing in common.
Timothy Olyphant (HBO's "Deadwood," "Live Free or Die Hard") plays Agent 47, the best of the best of the crop from the assassin farm. After seemingly carrying out a perfect hit on a high-ranking Russian politician, Agent 47 finds himself the victim of a conspiracy with everybody coming after him. Including his own people!!! Wow, never saw that comin'! Olyphant's performance is about as lively as a discussion about waste water treatment on C-Span. I get that he's supposed to be a cold, heartless kind of guy, but for God's sake, could he at least have blinked once or twice?!?
Agent 47 is doggedly pursued through the movie by Interpol cop Mike Whittier, played by "Mission: Impossible 2" co-star Dougray Scott. His performance is serviceable, but quickly forgettable. I was more interested in trying to figure out how it looks like Scott has aged about 20 years in the seven years that have passed since he took on Tom Cruise in "M: I 2."
There is also the damsel-in-distress/hooker-with-a-heart….ahh, we know the rest. Nika Boronina, played by Olga Kurylenko, a Russian stunner making her American film debut here, gets inadvertently caught in the middle of the Hitman and his adversaries. Rescues and gratuitous nudity ensue. The film's best performance goes to Robert Knepper (T-Bag on Fox's "Prison Break" series) as the corrupt Russian police inspector, Yuri Marklov. Knepper proves he can play slimy and underhanded just as well with a Russian accent as he does on TV with a southern accent.
The story plods along and, for this type of film, gets way too talky and takes entirely too much time between the action. When the action finally does show up, it's in way-too-short bursts that, with the exception of one or two decent sequences, it's over almost as quickly as it started. The script, by Skip Woods ("Swordfish," another bad movie that tried to save itself with nudity - of the Halle Berry variety) could have been written by a fourth grader with spell-check. The direction by newcomer Xavier Gens, who is credited as "trainee assistant director" on most of his previous credits, shows that he may need some more training.
1.5 out of 5 stars
The story is cliché and hack. A thin plot is OK as the set-up for a videogame, but you need a bit more substance if you're going to try and translate it into a feature film. A secret spy group takes infants and raises them to be cold-blooded super assassins (hence, the title). The killers aren't given names, they are just assigned numbers as identities. Complete with barcodes tattooed on the backs of their heads so they look like something stubbly in the produce section of Giant Eagle. This plot device was used a few years back in the Kurt Russell sci-fi actioner "Soldier." That movie was garbage, so at least the two films have more than one thing in common.
Timothy Olyphant (HBO's "Deadwood," "Live Free or Die Hard") plays Agent 47, the best of the best of the crop from the assassin farm. After seemingly carrying out a perfect hit on a high-ranking Russian politician, Agent 47 finds himself the victim of a conspiracy with everybody coming after him. Including his own people!!! Wow, never saw that comin'! Olyphant's performance is about as lively as a discussion about waste water treatment on C-Span. I get that he's supposed to be a cold, heartless kind of guy, but for God's sake, could he at least have blinked once or twice?!?
Agent 47 is doggedly pursued through the movie by Interpol cop Mike Whittier, played by "Mission: Impossible 2" co-star Dougray Scott. His performance is serviceable, but quickly forgettable. I was more interested in trying to figure out how it looks like Scott has aged about 20 years in the seven years that have passed since he took on Tom Cruise in "M: I 2."
There is also the damsel-in-distress/hooker-with-a-heart….ahh, we know the rest. Nika Boronina, played by Olga Kurylenko, a Russian stunner making her American film debut here, gets inadvertently caught in the middle of the Hitman and his adversaries. Rescues and gratuitous nudity ensue. The film's best performance goes to Robert Knepper (T-Bag on Fox's "Prison Break" series) as the corrupt Russian police inspector, Yuri Marklov. Knepper proves he can play slimy and underhanded just as well with a Russian accent as he does on TV with a southern accent.
The story plods along and, for this type of film, gets way too talky and takes entirely too much time between the action. When the action finally does show up, it's in way-too-short bursts that, with the exception of one or two decent sequences, it's over almost as quickly as it started. The script, by Skip Woods ("Swordfish," another bad movie that tried to save itself with nudity - of the Halle Berry variety) could have been written by a fourth grader with spell-check. The direction by newcomer Xavier Gens, who is credited as "trainee assistant director" on most of his previous credits, shows that he may need some more training.
1.5 out of 5 stars
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