Hitman

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Based on the popular video game, Hitman (surprisingly enough) centres on a highly-trained assassin (Olyphant) branded Agent 47 at birth, who sends people off to see their favourite dead pets in a stylised fashion, for a living. When a job gets severely complicated, he finds himself (and a kind-hearted hooker) pursued by both Interpol and the Russian military across Eastern Europe. This forces him to use his highly-developed skills to kill anyone who gets in his way. Okay, first and foremost, we knew that the plot was going to be ludicrous and quite probably hugely derivative. But the nature in which director Gans (or maybe the editor who replaced him) paces proceedings is extremely irritating - i.e. jumping from one country to another, Bourne-style, but without the fluidity. Granted, if that was the only problem Hitman had, it would be of little consequence; but sadly, the almost poetic trailer contains better action sequences than the actual film - with the much promised 'John Woo'-like shootouts few and far between, and incoherently staged. The immensely underrated Timothy Olyphant is by far the best thing going on here. He's not only eerily similar physically to his game counterpart, but gets far more mileage out of 47 than the unnecessarily over-complicated script should warrant. He genuinely deserves A-list status, but will sadly not find it headlining this. Dougray Scott meanwhile, doesn't so much phone in his performance as scribble it on a piece of paper and throw it in the general direction of where he wants it to go. The same could be said of almost everyone else in the supporting cast, but some awful dubbing (lips move horribly out of sync far too often) and ever-present background music hardly help. While to call this messy would be something of an understatement, it does offer up enough visual flourishes to keep the easily entertained mildly enthralled, and there are one or two decently staged hand-to-hand scraps. But when it comes down to it, Hitman is a badly-missed opportunity to be the first decent video game adaptation.

Details: France / USA / 110mins (16)