Hitman Movie Review
December 2nd, 2007 by Ed Lau |
After months of anticipation, I finally got to see Hitman last week. However, after I saw the trailers earlier in the summer, I already knew I was in for some disappointment. But still, being a massive fan of the popular game series, I couldn’t stop myself from going. A marginally favorable review from legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave me a glimmer of hope but in the end, my initial thoughts were right.
Timothy Olyphant, most recently of Live Free or Die Hard plays title character Agent 47, who’s sent to Russia for a job. However, things don’t go as planned and 47 finds himself on the run from Interpol, the FSB and an army of fellow hitmen and clones. For some reason, he finds himself protecting the helpless but bitchy Nika, a prostitute who finds herself on the run from the same people.
From the beginning, I questioned whether or not Olyphant was the right choice for the role and like so many other Hitman fans around the world, I found him miscast. Agent 47 is a clone, bred entirely to be a perfect killer. He has little in terms of morals of emotion. While he did help out a similar prostitute on a mission in two of the games in the series, that’s just about all he did. He doesn’t have any sort of…well, feelings. Olyphant shows too much kindness and emotion in the role. While 47 always wears a scowl, he’s not necessarily an angry person but Olyphant seems to be pissed just about all the time. Honestly, I question why they just didn’t get the actual Agent 47 to play the title role. Yes, that’s right…47 is modeled after a real person. David Bateson is the voice and likeness behind the world’s most badass assassin.
Also, I mentioned before that I have finished missions or even the entire games without firing so much as a shot from any sort of firearm and yet Olyphant’s 47 finds that going in, automatic weapons blazing is a better solution than the more subtle approach. Sure there is plenty of silenced weapons (including a highly unlikely 4km sniper shot…with a silenced rifle) but where’s the piano wire, the poison food or the good ol’ “shoving people into a shark tank”? This 47 would never qualify as a silent assassin. Hollywood is to blame here. Rather than putting out a movie true to the source material, they’ve degenerated it into a standard shoot ‘em up flick.
There’s are several other things that bothered me with Hitman, including the horrible casting of Robert Knepper (T-Bag from Prison Break) as a FSB agent. Throughout the movie, Knepper struggles to hide his accent and maintain a Russian one, making him sound like a Russian who immigrated to the Southern United States.
No other performance in the movie is particularly good or bad but just merely forgettable, as is much of the plot, which has 47 and Nika on the run because they are the only two people that know about a conspiracy. However, if you happen to watch the movie and think about it…how the hell could they ever expose it? Who would ever believe a prostitute and a guy that doesn’t actually exist? Seems like everyone is going through a lot of trouble to silence two people that have near zero credibility.
In short, Hitman is a poor effort all around, especially disappointing since it’s produced by Luc Besson, who directed the greatest assassin film of all time, Léon the Professional. I expected much more here. They messed up a lot of imporant references to the game, including The Agency, Diana and Agent Smith (which, I believe, is his last name…not first). Heck, they didn’t even get Jesper Kyd, who is responsible all the great music (along with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra) in all the Hitman games, to do the film’s score.
Now that I’ve seen it, I can tell you all to skip Hitman. It’s barely worth strangling with fiber wire. Maybe a push down an elevator shaft. Go buy a copy of Léon instead.
Verdict: 2.0 out of 10
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Ok, maybe it’s the assassin in me but . . . why the hell would you need a silencer if you’re 4km away from the target! Not to mention that the silencer would pretty much mess up the rifle’s sight calibration.
Sniper rifles are aften fitted with supressors.. Even 4km away you don’t want the locals seeing you or noticing you. Supressors also reduce recoil and a good one can make the gun shoot better. All you do is change your scope dope for the distance while using the supressor…. I loved the movie .. O-well to each their own.
Case in point, the “suppressor” on the end of the M82A1A. The recoil would probably kill you without one.
Also, if you can somehow see an incredibly brief muzzle flash 4km away…
1. at the end of the M82a1 is a muzzle break, not a suppressor. You can get them but honestly, what’s point.
2. the marine corps hasn’t standardized the suppressed snipers rifle until they adopted the Mk. 11 system (KAC SR-25) and from experience we don’t use them a lot.
3. the longest kill on record was taken at 2,430 yards by Robert Furlong, a Canadian Corporal who was using a McMillan rifle and had to aim the equivalent of 24 ft. over the guys head. the Chey-Tac M200 can hold a 16 5/8 inch group at 2361 yrds but it hasn’t truly been fielded yet.
and finally 4. when putting a dope on a rifle with a suppressor such as the Mk.11, you need 4 preset dopes:a)cold bore shot standard b)warm barrel c) cold bore suppressed d) warm bore suppressed, so you don’t need to worry about “sight calibration” what ever retard thought that up.
That’s really disappointing. I was looking forward to this movie also. Maybe I’ll rent it some time. Great review. Thanks for stopping me.
Haven’t seen this yet, but was going to this week. It’s disappointing to hear that it wasn’t that good. Oh well..
Disappointment? Maybe I will not go to the cine to watch this. Might only download the movie. Thanx for the review
[...] Hitman Movie Review [...]
I can just imagine the pitch meeting for this movie: “Agent 47 is the most bad-ass, guns blazing hit man ever! This movie will be all about testosterone and explosions!”
When will Hollywood realize that game remakes will be much more successful if they actually stick to the original story?!?!
I still don’t know how could Mr. 47 shot down his target from 4km! I only know that most of the long range sniper guns are only effective in about 2km (with an .50 BMG sniper rifle), and the world record of sniper shooting distance is 2430m (by a Canadian sniper)! 4km sniping is unbelievable!
If I recall correctly, in that scene, 47 is using a Blaser R93 (a favorite in the game apart from the Walther 2000.), which definitely is not capable of making a 4KM shot.
The McMillan TAC-50 used by the Canadian sniper for the world record has a usual effective range of just over 2KM so it is barely able to make the 2.4KM shot and required specialized VLD (very-low drag) ammunition AND they were below sea-level, increasing the long-range effectiveness of the shot. I’m guessing 47 was in Russia…and was shooting downward…so maybe that made a positive difference.
That being said, 47 is supposed to be the best in the world at all forms of combat, including the rifle so I wouldn’t doubt that in the fictional world, he could make the shot…just not with the rifle he was using or any other rifle in the world, for that matter.
dude this movie review sux. The movie was good your just a pickey little bitch
this movie is not a bad action movie, but still far from good, too many factual errors. a sniper shot for 4km? that’s impossible!
i don’t agree with you on the no credibility thing though, 47 has connection with agent smith as you see, and he was able to make some files that can threaten politicians, he got the credibility, nika doesn’t have any influence or credibility initially, but she got it after she’s associated with 47