The worst thing you could say about Hitman is that Tomb Raider 2: Cradle of Life looks credible by comparison. As for good things to say about it, there are none. Even as far as video-game movies go - which is not all that far to begin with - it makes a lame impression, landing right between "ludicrous" and "waste of time."
Our hitman (Timothy Olyphant) is known only as "47." As a child, he and his peers are bred to kill by an elite organization, with their heads permanently shaven and a barcode tattooed on their skulls' posteriors. We learn all this through one of the most pitiable opening-credit sequences in recent memory. Apparently, someone thought that using "Ave Maria" is enough to compensate for shoddy postproduction values. Sadly, they were wrong.
But back to the only slightly less shoddy plot. While on contract in Russia, Agent 47 finds himself betrayed by the very organization that raised him. The details here are a bit diluted, but at least Agent 47 never seems that confused. His reflexes are quick, and his trigger finger is quicker. His tenacity for surviving unpredictable odds might have been more fun, if we actually had a decent idea what he was escaping from.
The first big, and best, action sequence does reveal some excitement underneath the layers of monotony. Prior to his awareness of the betrayal, he stashes his guns in an ice container down the hall from his hotel room, rigs explosives on his door, and ties a bungee cord to his balcony's ledge. We don't know what he is doing at the time, of course, but we know we will find out, and when we do, it'll be loud.
It is, for the most part, loud, but not in the way that other Eurocentric collages of Americanized sex-and-gun exploitation movies are. Whereas something as equally ludicrous as xXx actually lived up to its rock 'n' roll aspirations, the only casual intimacy we get in Hitman is between the man and his guns.
Although his would-be love interest Nika (Olga Kurylenko) shows plenty of skin, it comes off as goofy and forced. Normally we might be thankful that the obligatory intercourse was left out. But in something as indifferently obnoxious as this, with as obvious a sex-device as Nika, the lack of a relationship climax is surprising.
2008 Woodie Awards
