Hitman
Hint to
Interpol: when you are tracking down a silent, ruthless contract killer,
perhaps you should pay a little more attention to the man with his head
shaved and a bar code tattooed on the back of his skull.
In the
movie Hitman, dozens of lives could have been saved had constables
all over the world just stopped and thought: "Hmmm, that's a weird look.
What's up with those guys?"
So, yes, I
am advocating the profiling of skinheads with UPC codes on their noggins.
Sue me.
Hitman
is a movie based on a computer game which is always a bad sign.
Need I go over the rogues gallery of horrible computer game adaptations? Doom,
Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Underworld, Super Mario
Brothers, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever... The list goes on and on and on.
The good
news is: as movies based on computer games go, Hitman is one of the better
ones.
The bad
news is: as movies in general go, it's just okay.
The first
thing I noticed when perusing the opening credits was that there was only
one woman in the cast with a role worthy of a credit. In fact, after
watching it I can only think of two women in the movie at all with a
third female on voiceover. Which is always worrisome, but at least you
know what you're getting into high testosterone violence with very little
feeling and even less sex. On the plus side, the Eurotrash hot actress
Olga Kurylenko does her best to give the audiences their dose of gratuitous
nudity.
Timothy
Olyphant an actor who I've always admired for his fiery, intelligent and
emotional acting style gets sort of muzzled here, playing the cool,
collected and unfeeling title character. Known simply as Agent 47 (he's way
too disconnected for a real name), he was brought up in this Asian village
where they breed cold blooded killers. All of the boys who live in the
village have that bar code tattooed to the back of their heads. Then
when they grow up, they are hired out to criminal enterprises as hitmen.
Agent 47 is
hired to take out a top Russian politician, but it turns out he has been
double-crossed, therefore the contract killer has to flee across the Eastern
Bloc to London killing everyone who gets in his way and taking the
politician's lover/slave Nika (Kurylenko) along as a hostage. At first
they hate each other, but as he gets to know Nika, Agent 47 comes to feel
for her and the hard life she has experienced.
This puts
the filmmakers in a slightly morally ambiguous gray area can we overlook
a lifetime of violent murder because the hitman learns to chastely love and
decides to save the hot Russian damsel-in-distress?
It's
obvious that the makers of Hitman think we should, but I'm not sure I
ever bought into their argument. It is also obvious that they are
inspired by the Bourne movies, but while they have some of the
obvious moves down the exotic locales, the sudden, oppressive, shocking
violence we never are able to warm up to Agent 47 like we do to Bourne,
simply because the main character is never allowed any human frailties.
In the
long-run, Hitman is an interesting but very flawed miss.
Alex
Diamond
Copyright ©2008 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: March 10, 2008.
