Review of Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) by Quincytheodore — 20 Aug 2015

Underneath the disguise of flashy cinematic and noise effects, Hitman: Agent 47 is sadly, still a misfire of corny script and abysmal plot.

As an action flick, it's certainly brimming with cool choreography as characters partially dance and partially John Woo dive their way through hail of bullet. Unfortunately, the plot is nonsensical and inconsistent. It's understandable that the team wanted to create larger than life plot, but the process needs more delicacy than taking small scenes of the game and throws a bunch of popular gimmicks from Terminator to Minority Report, then hopes it would work or audience would suspend their belief.

Story is the typical enhanced soldier theme. Granted, the video games used same narrative, but then it gets ridiculously over-the-top and even borderline supernatural. It follows Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) as he tries to find the scientist who pioneered the super soldier program by finding his daughter Katia (Hannah Ware).

The movie revolves around finding this scientist and shady organization trying to revive the program. For a stoic character such as 47, the movie pairs him with female lead for more interaction, otherwise it'd be just all business and murder. It doesn't help that Katia is one dimensional and honestly equally stiff, the chemistry between them is hardly engaging.

It's also odd that the multi-million organization and legendary assassins treats Katia as though she holds all the secret. The plot actually hinges entirely on her, and at times she even depicts as having clairvoyance skill. Script uses a lot of flamboyant one-liners, almost as in gibberish cat poster.

With all of these quirky narrative and plot discrepancy, it's really hard to take the movie seriously. Story feels like a pretense to push the pace to next grand set pieces. To its credit, it does have plenty of stylish cinematography. Using all sorts of nifty choreography, dual wielding gunslinger combat in exotic places, it has ample bombastic action.

Note that one of Hitman games actually titled Silent Assassin and it's also the highest rank in game. The cerebral or tactical approach is used sparsely, and those don't even appear natural. In fact, without the suit and Hitman on the title you wouldn't even recognize it as Hitman movie, probably some Universal Soldier spin-off.

It's definitely an explosive spectacle, but sadly also a mindless one. If this is how video game is, still, translated to silver screen, it doesn't convey the game's core story, or any presentable story in general.