Day 35: Film Review: Hitman
I rented “Hitman” last night. While miles better than the previews made it out to be, it’s nowhere near as good as it thinks it is.
The previews would let you think that main character Agent 47 was grown by a radical offshoot of some religious organization, and he’s carrying out God’s will. I have absolutely no idea why the marketing behind this movie was geared towards making you think the movie is about a crazy religious zealot killing people for the church, and not making everyone think he’s the coolest assassin since Leon.
The movie is overly-complicated to make you think that it’s deep. It’s really not. These guys crossed the wrong hitman, and now he’s going to kill his way through Russia to get back at them. All the garbage about the CIA vs. the FSB, or body doubles, or prostitution rings is just background noise. Especially since the truth behind all that noise exonerates no one. If your main character is on his way towards a goal, the goal has to affect him. If it changes the world but not him, you failed. Even if that change in his life is that it ends, that’s fine, but leaving whatever effect he had on the world ambiguous isn’t adding mystique, it’s negating. The plot is in place so a master assassin can murder everyone who looks at him. That’s it.
Timothy Olyphant is good as Agent 47, and while some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, it’s not really his fault. The guy can only do so much with the material he’s got. What I like about him, and his stuntman, and the guys who shot the movie, is that the character never hesitates. If he has to shoot someone, punch someone, knife a guy, or jump out a fifth story window, he does it. He never flinches, grimaces, or makes you believe for a second that’s not in his element. He’s more than a professional, this is his life. It’s all he’s done his entire life, and everything he does is a byproduct of that upbringing. Even the way he looks at a room, or sizes up another human being, you can see it in his eyes; he’s looking at all the angles. He’s deciding all the different way he can kill you depending on where he’s standing, what’s nearby, or the direction you’re facing.
The action is well-shot, and everyone looks cool and slick as hell. The camera is pulled back, and the movie seems more interested in different angles, rather than MTV jump cuts. Everything flows well in the action sequences, and you’re never lost or confused as to what’s happening. Even the hand-to-hand scenes are good, with the Agent being even more brutal and efficient than Jason Bourne.
Well maybe not more efficient, but it’s up close, vicious, and there’s no flashy Van Damme stuff that would never work in an actual fight.
The female lead is, in my humble opinion, incredibly sexy, but as an actress, she doesn’t bring a lot to the table. Her job is, basically, to hit on our ‘hero,’ become distressed, and take off her clothes a third of the time she’s on screen.
The enemies are basically faceless cannon fodder, there’re a few main bad guys, but they can’t hang with 47 physically, and their motivations are all over the place, so they don’t really matter. Honestly, the villains are such a non-factor in influencing the movie, the only place they matter to the story is dying in such a way to make Olyphant look badass.
This is not a great movie. It’s not even a good movie. Olyphant is excellent, but he’s excellent in everything he’s been in, because as I said, he’s a great actor, playing a very intense character. He just doesn’t have a lot to play with and I don’t think this movie did a good enough to get a new (decent) screen-writing team for a sequel.
“Hitman” gets a C.
Matt