The ‘Hitman’ movies continue to be awful

A movie based on a video game that opens at the end of August does not exactly stir high expectations.

“Hitman: Agent 47” is a video-game inspired movie that tells the story of an elite assassin whose latest target is a corporation that plans to create an army of killers, even more powerful than Agent 47.

It’s Rupert Friend who makes Hitman: Agent 47 even remotely watchable. There were 46 previous attempts to engineer a human being who could be stronger, faster, more intelligent and fearless than lesser mortals.

Caught in the middle is Litvenko’s daughter, Katia (Hannah Ware), who is also searching for her father, having been abandoned as a child, equipped with near psychic survival skills, including an extrasensory perception for lurking dangers. The movie borrows heavily from The Terminator in that a character named John Smith (don’t trust anyone with that name!) seems to be charged with saving the heroine from the Hitman who wants to wipe her out. He and his team picked some incredibly unique locations in both Berlin and Singapore which provide a spectacular backdrop for the film.

Skip Woods and Michael Finch wrote the screenplay for director Aleksander Bach’s feature debut. Details or in-depth dialogue need not apply.

“Hitman: Agent 47″ isn’t so much a sequel to the 2007 film “Hitman“, in which Timothy Olyphant played the title character, as it is a fresh start. The premise of the movie is intriguing, but it’s executed in chilly, dispassionate fashion and buried under too many bodies.

There’s the giant wall map covered in pushpins and newspaper clippings; the overstuffed notebook filled with cyphers and scribbles; and the out-of-focus flashbacks that suggest Katia is a mind-reader, hyper-perceptive, suffering from past trauma or, most likely, all three.

Rupert Friend: It entirely depends on whether people like this one. After seeing the new movie adaptation, Hitman: Agent 47, I will say that I wanted to go home and play a Hitman game immediately. That leads to shifting loyalties and a globetrotting cat-and-mouse game involving a mysterious man (Zachary Quinto) whose talk and actions seem to conflict. A lot! In film it’s all about rhythm and the reason why I love film so much because you are bringing all parts of the arts together. It just goes through the motions without trying to be its own movie.

“Those guys were awesome and really took care of us”.

When we actually meet Agent 47 he is cold and distant, which is true to his legendary demeanor.

I will spend the next six months regretting the fact I spent nearly two hours of my life watching this film.

If Hitman: Agent 47 makes enough cash, this might not be the last time we see the bald assassin on the big screen. We basically have to take it on faith that “Syndicate International” is evil because they are against our hero, Katia van Dees (Hannah Ware), and also 47, who is initially set up as the film’s villain but is so obviously the hero that you just sit there twiddling your thumbs for about half an hour, waiting for the movie to catch up with you. [Laughs] Look, this movie is all about audiences coming to see it. If it’s a hit, we want to continue making them.