Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)

Directed by Aleksander Bach

Contains spoilers.

How can one possibly describe a movie like Hitman: Agent 47. Is it even possible? Do the words exist to describe such an awful cinematic experience? I'm not sure, but I'll try to formulate a reasonable review.

The original Hitman movie didn't even set a high bar, so it should've been easy to make an action movie about an assassin in a black suit. That's 3 things that the movie needs to be good at. That doesn't even require amazing action or an amazing story. But alas, those 3 things were too much for the production team to rustle up. Instead, they have a mediocre assassin (a guy with guns, for the most part, with lots of great gadgets) in a suit that takes part in mediocre fights. Agent 47, a professional and life-long assassin of an international organization called Agency, is for all intents and purposes superhuman. Genetic experiments to accentuate specific genes and suppress others (boost speed and intelligence and tone down fear, among other changes) have turned him into something more. So most of his contracts aren't all that difficult, until he gets one that puts him against the product of similar experiments. 47's mission necessitates the saving of Katia van Dees (who we learn from 47 is actually "quatre-vingt-dix" or 90 in French) from a bushy-browed man with a gun who calls himself John Smith. John Smith, employed by a corporation called Syndicate, seems average enough, if strong-willed and clever, but seems to be a match for 47, who is, let me remind you, a professional and life-long assassin.

After an unbelievably nonsensical series of fights and conversations, John Smith fights 47 after being shot in the chest. John has 47 on the ropes before an explosion interrupts them, allowing 47 and Katia to escape. The following scene, with 47 and Katia walking along a river, has 47 explaining that John has "subdermal, titanium armor." Yes, really. Subdermal. Titanium. Armor. According to 47, it's injected, in liquid form, under the skin and is lightweight and strong.

The already bad movie gets worse from there. The story is your typical and average action fare: nonsense with flashbacks and a scientist who's the key to everything and needs to be saved; the hero is cool, stoic, and unmatched, but the bad guy turns out to actually be a match for him. Even the marketing for Agent 47 made it seem like an average, action movie. There's average slow-mo; there's utterly mediocre fighting, featuring an assassin who won't go for headshots against an enemy with body armor, opting instead to unload an entire clip directly into the body armor, point blank; there's a chase with an obviously product-placed Audi versus motorcycles in which 47 doesn't just hit the brakes to slam them into the car; there's little to no stealth involved from a professional, life-long assassin; there are terrible attempts at sarcastic humor.

Rupert Friend, as 47, is passable, but as the character itself doesn't leave much to the imagination, there isn't much for Friend to expand on; the acting fizzles with extremity as the script itself fails to deliver anything remotely interesting. Even Hannah Ware, as Katia, fails to turn her character into anything more than a desperate, crybaby damsel, even though her character is supposed to become a heroine on par with 47, himself. Zachary Quinto, as John Smith, never comes across as scary, and seems more like your run-of-the-mill henchman, except for his powerful eyebrows. Even in the 2007 entry, titled simply Hitman, left a lot to be desired as far as acting was concerned, with Timothy Olyphant coming across as something like a Nicolas Cage creation. In fact, almost all the acting related to this series is Nicolas Cage-esque, with deplorable accents and body language.

Óttar Guðnason's cinematography is utterly average and, because the rest of the movie is basically shit, is the best thing about this movie, despite mediocre CG. If Agent 47 had even a somewhat better story that didn't try so hard to be epic and dramatic, and somewhat more subtle acting, and more of a focus on good action then the movie could've been actually been memorable, instead it's more like a made-for-TV, SyFy movie.

There is literally nothing, from start to finish, that sets the movie apart in any way. As a directorial debut, Hitman: Agent 47 will forever be a scorch mark on any resume and Aleksander Bach doesn't seem to have much of a future in the industry except, maybe, as the future Uwe Boll.

Grade F- = 16 / 100