Directed by: Aleksander Bach
Starring: Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto and Ciaran Hands
Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
In a nutshell:
Elite assassin Agent 47 teams up with Katia, a girl who has been searching all her life for own identity and ancestry. Together they must unlock her secret whilst at the same time fighting off enemies who are hell bent on capturing her.
My thoughts:
Well, here we are at the end of another summer season and what have we got to show for it? Twentieth Century Fox rebooting a movie which its predecessor Hitman was only released eight years ago. Since it was moved from a February to an August release, 20th Century Fox may very well have considered they had a decent summer action flick on their hands. Do they?
I’ll say one thing for Hitman: Agent 47 it’s certainly at home in a truly atrocious August for movies. Hitman: Agent 47 is a bland movie that bears nothing but a passing resemblance to the game that inspired it. It is by definition a studio cash grab from its production company TSG Entertainment which was also the same studio that helped make Fantastic Four for Fox, perhaps that is the real reason why this one was moved to help prop up an equally dire movie?
Agent 47 is written by the same writer as the original Hitman movie: Skip Woods. What were they hoping to achieve using the same writer? If you’re going to reboot a movie, the very least you should do is employ a new writer. But not in this case. It gets even worse when you see that this guy is responsible for such stinkers as X Men Origins: Wolverine, The A-Team and A Good to Day Die Hard. Second time round he pulls nothing new out the hat with a convoluted far-fetched yawn fest of a story that is married to banile clunky dialogue. At the start of the movie we are treated to a prologue which is as unnecessary as it is dense.
Agent 47 is an allegory of the movie itself. Devoid of charisma, charm, humor and above all heart. It is a flat stale affair that has a direct-to-DVD feel about it, just like its predecessor. Rupert Friend’s Agent 47 is the best thing about the movie, and that’s saying something considering he’s a robotic killing machine lacking any emotion who is hard to empathize with and get to know. All other characters including Star Trek’s Zachary Quinto (Who was apparently looking for a quick pay check) are all one dimensional characters.
The movie does feature some serviceable action scenes, but as the whole venture is without heart they come off as bland and generic. Agent 47 is also let down by dodgy CGI and some horrendous stunt double body work employed during the fight scenes for Zachary Quinto, which in a summer 2015 release is inexcusable. It also uses the same close up shaky camera technique used in movies such as Taken 3 to shoot its fight scenes which try to be take a leaf out of the same book as John Wick but just don’t work, add to the fact that Agent 47 moves in another time frame to everyone else gets more than tiresome.
Despite Rupert Friend’s best efforts as the deadly assassin, Hitman: Agent 47 shoots nothing but blanks. It’s a generic soulless action movie with a ridiculous plot that is lazily executed. Add to that awful dialogue and dodgy CGI, this is yet another example of why video games make awful movies.