♥
 |
| A very symmetrical man with a very big gun and a scarcely dressed woman stand out on this not exactly subtle poster for Xavier Gens' Hitman |
Agent 47 is a bald assassin, who gets mixed into a deadly affair involving some Russians and a woman, all the while he is also chased by the Interpol.
Hitman is written by Skip Woods (Swordfish (2001)) and directed by Xavier Gens (Frontier(s)/Frontière(s) (2007)). It is based on the Hitman video games (2000-).
The hugely selling video game is regrettably adapted without inspiration, vision or a discernible direction here in a film that should be found in a dictionary under examples of 'Euro-trash'.
Some of the fight scenes are reasonably well choreographed, but otherwise the film is a disaster on all fronts: Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood: The Movie (2019, TV-movie)) is miscast, sheepish and pretending in the title role, (he later divulged that he only took the job to pay out his house mortgage.) Ulrich Thomsen (The Space Between the Lines/Gut Gegen Nordwind (2019)) is also exhausted as a villain (once again), and Dougray Scott (Jamie Johnson (2017, TV-series)) is comical as an Interpol agent. We have nothing invested in the hero, who here both literally and figuratively appears to be an anonymous cipher. Scene after scene makes little to no sense whatsoever. The plot jumps randomly from country to country, and your critical senses need to be securely switched off for any entertaining thrills to be excavated from Hitman.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 24 mil. $
Box office: 101.2 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 4.21 times its cost)
[Hitman was released 21 November (USA + 4 more markets) and runs 92 minutes. Shooting took place from March - June 2007 in France, London, England, Istanbul, Turkey, Cape Town, South Africa and in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Gens was fired during post-production, and Nicolas De Toth reportedly directed re-shoots. The film opened #4, behind fellow new released Enchanted, This Christmas and holdover hit Beowulf, to a 13.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another weekend in the top 5 (#4) and grossed 39.6 mil. $ (39.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 7.5 mil. $ (7.4 %) and France with 6.9 mil. $ (6.8 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to 3 notches over this one. The video game was again adapted to the big screen with Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) with mostly new filmmakers and stars. Gens returned with Les Incroyables Aventures de Fusion Man (2009, short) and theatrically with The Divide (2011). Olyphant returned in Stop-Loss (2008). Hitman is rotten at 16 % with a 3.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Hitman?
No comments:
Post a Comment