Despite having, in the watered down words of Chesney Hawkes, moderate hopes and aspirations for the latest movie adaptation of the ultimate modern-day assassin game, Hitman: Agent 47 manages to let you down at every turn. The story itself isn’t all that bad, taking it’s cue from the success of the game, but the delivery is all kinds of wrong, resulting in one of 2015’s biggest movie let downs.
While it’s not quite as much of a disappointment as Fantastic Four was, in some ways it feels like a worse film. The fight choreography stands out as being particularly weak as it lacks the hard edged snap of realism with more than a few lacklustre swipes, poor editing and sloppy action, which is all the more telling because fighting is such a key ingredient in the film.
Rupert Friend (Homeland) isn’t too bad as Agent 47 when he’s in sequences against randoms, despite the overly contrived setup of some of them, but when he’s going toe-to-toe with Zachary Quinto (Star Trek: Into Darkness), who plays the ridiculously named Brian/John Smith, they just end up looking like a couple of drunk dads slapping it out over who’s the best. It gets even more ridiculous when you add in Hannah Ware (Shame) who is way too slight to duke it out with anyone, let alone the best the Syndicate has to offer. Her arms are literally wafer thin and yet you’re expected to believe that she’s capable of serious carnage.
The story itself is decent enough in terms of the initial framework, introducing Katia van Dees (Ware) as the daughter of a prominent scientist, and creator of the Agent programme, Dr. Piotr Litvenko – played by Ciarán Hinds (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)). As she gets closer to find her missing father, she manages to get the attention of both 47 and Smith and they become locked in a battle to win her over and hunt down the genius geneticist.
However, it starts to break down with Quinto’s delivery as it’s instantly obvious that he’s on the nastier side of the equation. This goes from frailties to futility by the end of the film as new developments are thrown in without much thought, including the woeful scene with the 48 doppelganger and the silly buildup to the medicinal explosives that finishes it all.
Quinto just doesn’t work for us in this role as he needs to move very fast a lot of the time, which is against the grain for him, because what he does well has always been slow and deliberate, whether it’s Sylar in Heroes or Spock in the new Star Trek adaptations. Hinds is largely wasted in the film and slightly over-eggs the sickness of Dr. Litvenko, which is a shame, because he could have been one of the salvations. It’s a similar case with Angelababy (Independence Day: Resurrection), although without much in the way of previous credits of note, but it just seemed a bit pointless having her in the film at all and doing so little.
It’s not hard to tell that Hitman: Agent 47 is director, Aleksander Bach’s big-screen debut considering the number and size of the holes that are shot through it. Direction is the biggest problem with the film, which needed to be much more self-critical, detailed and well focused than it turned out to be. It was always going to be tough going from music videos and TV ads to a major movie without any real right of passage in between, but that learning curve meant that the movie didn’t get anywhere near the fairly limited expectations computer game fans will have had in the run-up to the release.
Some of the effects are impressive, ranging from an epic jet engine firing away in the background of an early action sequence and the slow motion reaction times of the genetically engineered agents, but they’re just not enough to make up for all of the negatives. The only other positive of note is that Thomas Kretschmann is a sturdy, but rarely used nugget of minor credibility as Antoine LeClerq, the chairman the Syndicate and mastermind behind a lot of the mayhem.
Hitman: Agent 47 could have been a decent movie if things had panned out differently. Admittedly, it would have needed a a few cast changes, a more experienced director and steadier hands behind the fight choreography and film editing, but the potential was definitely there. We’re sure that one day the game will get the movie adaptation it sort of deserves, but for now it’s 0 for 2.
Hitman: Agent 47 review: 2.4/5
