[hitman] the rise of evil as the new heroism

Why is it that games don’t often translate well into films?

Is it that they’re lovingly and pedantically transferred like a sort of fan fiction, minus a great deal of integral style? Is it that the game itself is so intellectually bereft in the first place?

Hitman, with Timothy Olyphant, is an enigma in that it was roundly panned by critics but not necessarily by the public who bought and viewed it. For a start, there is the problem of the genre. It hardly stands up from a moral point of view, not on account of the blood and guts spraying everywhere virtually the whole time but in terms of the life philosophy it portrays – a sad philosophy which celebrates, rather than condemns the unfortunate, dislocated, soulless central character and his trail of destruction.

While I ask what people see in horror, with bits of people destroyed in slow motion and with cold indifference, while I ask what’s wrong with a mind which revels in this [could it be a need to strike back at the bogeymen which beset us in real life], the question remains why I liked this film and why I bought it yesterday for £3?

Would I have paid more?

Maybe £5, no more. There’s an element of seeing Oliphant dispose of a series of low-lifes hell-bent on destroying him, the destroyer. Sympathy for Oliphant? Not really but a desire to see him overcome, to close the thing off and to protect the damsel in distress though it’s becoming apparent that Olga Kurylenko is one kinky female, with her requisite naked torture scene and boobs bouncing everywhere. Pity she scarred her face with the tattoo and bits of metal, the latter seeming to disappear towards the end.

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle Pop Culture Critic, says

"Hitman" is one of the best movies ever made from a video game, which doesn't provide you with very much information. That's like declaring the best meal you've eaten at a strip club, the best love ballad by Kenny Loggins or the best hangover you've had after drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon.

But the first chapter in the saga of killing machine Agent 47 does deserve some praise, even if it is faint and damning. "Hitman" is not a spectacular movie, but the action scenes are well shot, there's no shortage of R-rated gore and the plot moves along quickly enough to mask the fact that the whole endeavor is completely ridiculous.

The list of good video games made into bad movies is long and depressing. Most films in the genre fail for two reasons: 1. Directors almost always translate the games too literally, so the end result looks laughably bad; and 2. Unless you can get Angelina Jolie involved, studios are almost never willing to splurge on the budget.

From the start, "Hitman" had a better chance than most, with hard-core gamer Vin Diesel signed on to star, executive produce and presumably shepherd the project. … Like a good video game, the backstory in the film is brief … most of the rest of the film takes place in Russia, where "Hitman" spends way too much time ripping off action moves from other movies. But at least they're good movies.

The film takes itself a little too seriously, considering how much a guy like Agent 47 would stand out in the real world. A pasty-white bald guy with a barcode tattooed on the back of his head can be a master of stealth in a video game, but it doesn't work so well with flesh-and-blood actors. And the twists and turns are also way too complicated.

Other critics panned it unmercifully and the Rotten Tomatoes meter is woefully down in the low numbers. Dull, boring, mechanical, Oliphant too pretty boy, no plot development – this latter is like Die Hard being seen as not intellectual enough or James Bond being seen as lapsing into fantasy on occasions – the critics went on and on, causing one viewer, Jay, to comment:

I’m glad I didn't read the reviews beforehand or I might have skipped this. I was a little suspicious of Olyphant as Hitman but he pulls it off, and I think people that don't like this either think it's a Bourne Identity knockoff, which it can't be, since Hitman precedes it, or just can't get down with a sociopathic killer, which is understandable.

However, for what it is, it is excellent, and there were actually no sappy BS scenes … he has some minor empathy as the story goes on but still stays true to his character, which is insanely rare. I only fast forwarded once and ended up having to go back because the scene I thought was going to happen didn't. Good show.

Another viewer, Chris said:

The sheer intensity exuded by Olyphant and the emotional performance by the lovely Olga make this movie what it is. It was the interaction between the two: the way Agent 47 cared for her wellbeing and yet brutally disposed of the corrupt characters in such a cold, calm, and flawless manner. The two sides of his character were wonderfully played.

It gives a glimpse into the life of 47... "How does a good man decide when to kill?"

I've played all the games but I prefer the movie depiction of 47. The story could use some work, but it didn't ruin the movie for me. I'm buying the DVD!

Hartlaub said:

“Olyphant is decent, but way too pretty to be Agent 47, who looks more like an angry Patrick Stewart in the video games.”

The truth of the matter is somewhere in there and I’d go along with viewer Chris’s summation. I wouldn’t have watched it with some plug ugly doing the killing – we’d not care in the least for him. But Oliphant’s “little boy never given a chance” style, which contrasts with his misogynist dialogue with Kurylenko, which, in turn, she seems to lap up and which seemingly causes her to swoon and even hero worship him as the film progresses, engages sympathy enough to make you want to see how it turns out.

If I dared question the whole moral basis of such a movie, if the people who made Agent 47 into what he was and used him in the slick, computer aged global evil that so many of us are now trying to oppose were called into question, you might just snort and say I was taking myself way too seriously, which, as you’ll recall above, was one criticism of the movie itself.

If I wondered why the surfeit of movies today pushing the evil-possessed, narrow-eyed destroyer as some sort of hero figure for kids and if I regretted that no sort of romance actually developed between the male and female leads beyond her desperately trying to get bonked and failing miserably, if I said that this was a sad movie in both that respect and in terms of the human spirit, you might say I was reading far too much into an “action” movie, today's type which requires the acceptance of evil as a legitimate basis for heroism.

One theme which was quite interesting, form the male perspective, was how Kurylenko's hotness, her single feminine weapon, was completely negated by Agent 47's indifference to sexual bonding and that left her with no bargaining chip. How she was going to deal with having zero sway on him and how she did deal with him was one of the more intriguing aspects.

I hate to say it but as I age now, a similar thing is happening. A girl one might have died for in earlier years now makes one wonder why one even bothered - the sexual asset seems so overrated, especially when applied so unskilfully, so youthfully.

The stakes, quite frankly, have been raised, the bar's been raised and nowadays, a certain amount of intellect, drive and sanity is required of either gender in order to attract. Or so it seems to me. It's getting to the stage now that if the film has no male-female interraction, even of this type, then it is scarcely interesting to watch. And conversely, if it consists only of this, it is equally unwatchable.

The blend's the thing.

This film touched on a sufficient number of issues , the lead characters were intriguing enough and there were enough cool little scenes, such as the swordfight, to engage interest in its outcome.


Action. Starring Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko and Henry Ian Cusick. Directed by Xavier Gens. (R. 100 minutes.)