Review of Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) by Mrandom — 22 Aug 2015

The first half of the film develops a new form of cinematography which can only be described as "hallucinatory". It was achieved thru a combination of non-sense dialogue, shaky camera, blurry lighting and pointless close-ups. The plot is a mess throughout the film but the first half was particularly awful. 47 was even the antagonist in the first half. No one really give a sh*t about some girl with superpower. The audiences are here to see 47 and assassination, not some girl with anxiety problems and some map that the camera never gives a clear view but keeps shaking in front of it.

And we are certainly not here to see excessive BOOMs and BANGs. Sadly enough, this second 47 movie is still more about violence not assassination. Rubert Friend himself looks a lot more like a soldier than an assassin, so that's why he looks pretty good in the soldier outfit in the film. He is too young to be 47, and he is not cold enough. It is good to see some "stealth" element in this movie. The part when 47 "trains" Katia has something new and should be pretty interesting to hardcore fans. But such "stealth" is always followed by more excessive violence. Horrible.

Superpower is certainly not acceptable in 47 series. Bullet-proof skin? This is not a Marvel movie. 47 admitting the opponent is stronger? That is not 47. 47 is always the best, although he is not perfect. That is one of the many beauties of Hitman. We don't need a superman or supervillain because that's just unreal. Katia's "instinct"-like power is not very acceptable either. In Hitman: Absolution, 47's instinct ability was achieved thru hard training, but Katia's power is more like a result of an implantation. After all, it is NEVER CLEARLY EXPLAINED in the entire film.

The background of the Agency and Diana is never explained as well. Non-player audiences won't understand Diana's role in the plot. What's more astonishing is that 47 works against Diana, and Diana shows her face a lot (she may have never shown her face in the game. The one who died in Absolution might not be the real Diana), and...Diana is a Chinese! Are you f**king kidding me? Her voice is clearly using voice over because I know that Chinese actress doesn't speak good English. Why does western films use Chinese actress so often? A violence film like Hitman is gonna be censored by Chinese government anyway. BTW, she was using a stage name in the Cast (Angelababy), b*itchy, uh? And it was the first time that I see a film's cast is sorted in alphabetical order, so this "Angel-a-baby" could be on top. She must have slept with the producer. She is that notorious in China, really.

Lack of continuation with the video game is another weakness of this film. We already have the girl Victoria who is likely to be a sidekick of 47, so why does the film reboot completely and introduce some new genetic scientist and some lady whose power is not so realistic? And eventually the film turned 47 against 48 who is supposed to be dead in the game long time ago. Plus the appearance of Mr. 48 does not even make sense because Katia is Miss. 90 already. Why would the Agency send one agent to fight one similar model and one superior model? Again, the plot is a mess. Please just stick with the game.

There are some elements such as the "stealth" part I mentioned that are inherited the game. Another example is the bathing scene of Katia. It was a non-sense scene but it refers to the bathing Diana in Absolution. These are some sparks that players might find interesting, but for non-players, these are just some non-sense rubbish. The main dilemma for Hitman films so far is the difficulty of balancing traditional action elements and Hitman's stealth element. I think you can never achieve both the staggering visual effect and the "silent kill" philosophy of stealth games. It will take a grandmaster director who is also a Hitman fan to create a new genre of film, the stealth film. As much as I can imagine, it will be a film in a form like Run Lola Run in which 47 carefully plans his moves in his hideout, imagining different infiltration plans (some action elements may be applied here) until he find a way through, not touching the surrounding environment at all. Planning the moves is always the major beauty of Hitman games.