Hitman (DVD, 2009, Unrated; Widescreen)

Based on the video game franchise of the same title, “Hitman” exploits every action-flick cliché imaginable and still manages to be dull. It’s bang, boom, blah — action movies for bored dummies.

A strangely, at times ridiculously, miscast Timothy Olyphant stars as the titular contract killer, who has been raised by some monastic-looking male order to travel the world in bloody business class, from Africa to Europe to Russia with hate. He’s a globe-trotting unholy man, a messianic messenger of murder. He’s also bald, has a bar code tattooed on the back of his head and is known only as 47. Women leave him cold (if vaguely rattled), which probably comes as a relief to the movie’s presumptive adolescent male target audience.

There’s a hodgepodge story from the screenwriter Skip Woods, though its details are sufficiently uninteresting to the director, Xavier Gens, as to make them uninteresting to anyone watching (or reading about) this mess. In “Hitman,” Mr. Gens, whose feature debut, “Frontière(s),” earned legitimacy by playing at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, lavishes his attention on blowing stuff up, including dozens upon dozens of people. Life is always cheap in the exploitation racket, but it’s still tiresome watching one after another anonymous extra get a sizable hole blown through his body, to watch movie blood spray like water amid chunks of fake body bits, especially when there’s no story to speak of, no decent acting, no wit, no point.



Well, there is a point, which is to reel an audience in with an entertaining spectacle of death. In this regard, Mr. Gens fails, despite owing a visual and thematic debt to Luc Besson, whose company helped produce this junk. There’s loads of noisy violence and R-rated gore in “Hitman,” along with the regulation female nudity (via Olga Kurylenko), but these flashy parts never cohere or gather momentum.

Rather, Mr. Olyphant’s robotic assassin moves through corridors in effective mimicry of a familiar video game visual strategy, pausing every so often to peer through a gun scope, stare at the pulsing lights on his laptop or brutally dispatch one more generic human obstacle. On occasion, the story shifts to Dougray Scott, whose indifferent turn as an Interpol agent chasing after 47 nicely mirrored my own reaction to the on-screen din

OVERALL
7/10

I LOVE THE SERIES OF THE VISEO GAME AS PER MY REVIEW AND I WOULD SAY THAT THIS IS A MUST SEE MOVIE FOR ALL THE HITMAN FANS..IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED THE GAME THAN I SAY RENT THIS OR RENT THE GAME!

Although I've never played the 'Hitman' video game, I will now get a chance to do so since my copy of the DVD also came with the full PC version of the 'Hitman - Blood Money' game as an added bonus.

Synopsis:

Opening scene shows a group of shaved-head boys (genetically engineered assassins) receiving bar code tattoos upon the back of their heads with subsequent scenes showing them being taught in the utlization of firearms and extreme martial arts. These boys are only given/known by numbers and not names.

An Interpol agent learns about Agent 47 (played by Timothy Olyphant), and the two talk briefly. The scene flashes back 3 months prior, as 47 is completing a 'ordered hit' in Russia. 47 is then ordered by his employers (the 'Organization') to kill his next target, Russian President Mikhail Belicof, at a public gathering which is also being covered by the media. Via a sniper rifle head shot from over 4km away, Agent 47 succeeds in killing Belicof; however, he later learns that Belicof's death was covered up...being portrayed in the media as a simple grazing head wound.

47 meets Belicof's girlfriend Nika (played by the gorgeous Olga Kurylenko) who eventually helps 47 uncover the fact that Belicof was in fact dead, and that a double had replaced him in order to put into place a 'puppet leader' who would remain in control of Russia. After a few narrow escapes, 47 quickly learns that his employers (the 'Organization') had dispatched assassins to kill him for failing his mission. Agent 47 then arranges a meeting with a CIA agent and makes a deal that if the CIA helps him sometime in the future, 47 will kill Belicof's brother, a slave trafficker and black market arms dealer...the CIA accepts the deal.

Throughout the balance of the film, 47 and Nika are caught-up in a 'cat and mouse' game with Interpol, the CIA, the FSN (a Russian governmental organization), and plenty of 'bad guys'. Agent 47 eventually succeeds in eliminating Belicof's double and successfully eludes Interpol and the FSN with the help of the CIA; thus, leaving the future open for a possible sequel?

Opinion:

If you like hard-hitting graphic action films as I do, then you'll definitely like this movie, as it is non-stop throughout. BTW, this film's original soundscore (OSS) by Geoff Zanelli is definitely on my acquisitions list.

Warning: This movie contains some nudity and a lot of graphic violence.

I loved Timothy Olphant, he played the part of the Hitman really well, I loved everything about the movie, It was action packed and Romantic all in one. I bought this movie because I knew it was going to be Great.

A top notch Action Movie. With a bit of science fiction as a starter, Agent 47
kills everything that he touches and is contracted to kill the leader of a nation by his "Agency". The hit is a "frame" of course and he encounters
mountains of trouble along with a "fake" witness that ends up tagging along
with him--and developes attachment too. A very good action movie-one of the
best I have watched lately. People that like "Shooter" will certainly enjoy
this one also. Scenes of nudity and language are in this movie, so best for
the Adults of the family only.

Timothy Olyphant is perfect for his role as the Hitman. Born into an association where he is trained from berth to be the perfect assassin this movie tells the tale of one of his most challenging missions.