Review of Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) by Thequietgamer — 25 May 2016

It's not hard to see that this second attempt at a Hitman movie repeats quite a few of the same mistakes video game movies have made over the years. Some of the more exuberant action scenes feel pulled from "how to make a cheesy video game movie 101." However when taken at face value it can still provide some silly thrills. At the very least it manages to be better than the last Hitman movie.

The action is where the cast majority of the entertainment value comes from. Director Aleksander Bach has crafted quite a few clever ways for Agent 47 to kill people. Of course the whole thing regularly goes off the deep end with it's absurdity, but for the most part it's (intentionally?) goofy fun to watch. The gorier kills are particularly entertaining.

The plot itself isn't bad, but let's be honest who is going to watch this for the plot? It's the type of thing that works well enough to get things going and give a reason/excuse for the action onscreen to take place. So you just kind of go with knowing that if you really paid full attention to it that things would likely fall apart.

The characters themselves aren't bad. Neither are the actors playing them. It's hard to really consider just how good the people onscreen are doing given the material. The exception being Rupert Friend. His (almost) emotionless performance does a great job of selling the character. Quinto is just there to play a stereotypical villain and Hannah Ware, despite being so integral to the plot, is just kind of around to show some PG-13 level skin for the teenage Hitman fans watching, as well as the older male gamers who never really grew up. Nobody else is worth mentioning.

That's kind of the problem, not only with this new Hitman, but also with video game movies as a whole. Most of them are specifically designed to appeal to the players of the game. The problem with that? Apparently the people behind these movies view all gamers as horny 13 year olds who only care about the bang boom anyway. That and these same people don't know the source material well at all.

So "Agent 47" hits quite a few of the pitfalls video game movies have made that gave them such a bad reputation in the first place. Does that mean it's not worth watching? Not necessarily. We are all at the point now where we know what to expect from video game movies. So long as you aren't/weren't expecting this to be the video game movie to change that, then you should be okay. Thankfully, somehow Rupert Friend and some decent, if occasionally overly cheesy action keep it from reaching the levels of suck other video game movies have attained, particularly the first attempt at a Hitman movie. So it has that going for it. It's a video game movie. Take it or leave it.

6.