Hitman: Agent 47 – Movie Review
I normally don’t like to mention a movie studio when reviewing a film that they distributed but in this case, I feel I must. It’s not unheard of for a studio to release two terrible high profile films in a short amount of time. It is more common than you think. However, within two weeks time, 20th Century Fox has released two franchise reboots that are either as bad or even worse than the films they rebooted. Josh Trank’s “Fantastic Four” is bad, but not the disaster most claim it to be. The same can’t be said for Aleksander Bach’s “Hitman: Agent 47”, which is definitely worse than the 2007 film which was based on a popular video game. The original film was a box office bomb and savaged by critics, nobody wanted this reboot, but Fox didn’t seem to care and gave us one anyway. The other puzzling thing is that Fox handed the potential franchise starter to a director with very little filmmaking experience. I honestly don’t know what these studio execs are thinking.
One of the first problem with a film like “Hitman” is that the title character, Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) has absolutely no personality. He is a human being that has been programmed to kill. Those type of characters aren’t very engaging. The woman he is trying to protect, Katia (Hannah Ware) is a more human-like version of him, but she has just become aware of that. The man tasked with hunting them down, John Smith (Zachary Quinto) is also an genetically enhanced human but he is more like a whiny brat who wants others to know that he is more advanced than they are. These are the characters we are forced to spend 96 minutes with and it is pure torture.
Another major issue with “Hitman” is that it’s a film about an enhanced hitman. All you really need are some good gunfights, maybe some close combat fight sequences, some car chases and you could have a solid yet simple little action film. Why does this thing need to be stuffed to the gills with bad CGI. Everything here comes off as cheesy and stupid.
There is one aspect of “Hitman: Agent 47” that does amaze and that is the use of Shanghai. Some of the locations were absolutely stunning. I just wished they were used in a better film. Movies based on video game are generally a bad idea and this is just another example why. It is time for the “Hitman” film series to be taken out!
By: Marc Ferman
