Hitman (2007) - Mindless video game adaptation 'fun'

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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? 

The A-Team (2010) - Carnahan and stars present a poorly made noise factory

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+ Worst Poster of the Year

Two major stars (Bradley Cooper and Liam Neeson), a foreign medium-level star (Sharlto Copley) and an MMA fighter (Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson) are apparently in the middle of nowhere, well-equipped with guns on this obviously photo-shopped poster for Joe Carnahan's The A-Team

Four dynamic US Army Ranger pals are the A-Team, who break out, when they are locked up, and take orders from a sneaky CIA-type to secure a money press from falling into the wrong hands.

This is convoluted into an incomprehensible story in The A-Team, served behind a demonstratively shallow and brainless plate of macho action, which is apparently supposed to succeed based on lots of noise and the tone set, which is one of permanent overgrown teenage male swagger. Any relation to the real world is almost non-existing, and no one in the cast distinguish themselves here, playing characters that seem a veritable parade of idiots. The four heroes often find themselves in scenes, where they are sweating and yelling profusely, while dubious CGI effects inform us that they are in great danger.
A couple of scenes are lightly amusing, and The A-Team is completely unpretentious, - but these are negligible mitigating circumstances, when the film is this bad. It is written by Brian Bloom (Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016, video game), Skip Woods (Swordfish (2001)) and co-writer-director Joe Carnahan (The Grey (2011)), based on the same-titled 1983-87 NBC TV-series.

Related posts:

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Watch a teaser for the film here

Cost: 100 mil. $ (110 mil. $ before tax credit)
Box office: 177.2 mil. $
= Big flop
[The A-Team premiered 3 June (Hollywood) and runs 119 minutes. Development began in the mid 1990s, and John Singleton was one point supposed to direct the film. Filming took place in Norway and in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, including in Vancouver, from September - December 2009. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release The Karate Kid, to a 25.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another 2 weeks (#3; #5) and grossed 77.2 mil. $ (43.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 15.2 mil. $ (8.6 %) and France with 9.1 mil. $ (5.1 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 1½/4 star review, equal to its rating here. The poor box office performance killed plans for a sequel. Neeson in 2012 called the film 'confusing'. The A-Team is rotten at 47 % with a 5.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The A-Team?

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) - Willis' action-franchise dies an ugly death

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+ Worst Poster of the Year + Stupidest Movie of the Year

Die-hard cop John McClane from New York partners up with the son he (suddenly) has, in Moscow, where uranium and nuclear warheads are falling into the wrong hands.

A Good Day to Die Hard, the 5th film in the Die Hard action movie series, is an awful film through and through. It makes Die Hard 2 (1990) - the series' low-point until now, - seem like a world class film. For a series of movies with as high a standard as the Die Hard movies; Die Hard (1988) is an action masterpiece, and both Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) and Die Hard 4.0 (2007) are excellent movies, - it is a little painful to see it all come to this:
Die Hard 5 has no good villain, (which is pivotal), and only one other name-actor besides Bruce Willis (Pulp Fiction (1994)) as McClane, and that is up-and-comer Jai Courtney (Jack Reacher (2012)), (not counting Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof (2007)), because she only reappears very shortly as McClane's daughter.) Courtney and Willis have absolutely no on-screen chemistry and seem in fact to loathe each other. Their scenes together are so bad.
The script is also bonkers; confident that it can do the impossible, when it wants the audience to follow McClane through idiotic, overly huge and stupid action scenes and then go straight into weirdly emotional bonding scenes between Willis and his gorilla-like son. It is also furnished with cliché upon cliché, and seemingly build on thin air - nothing! The responsible writer is Skip Woods (X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)).
A Good Day to Die Hard even has an extremely ugly CGI-finale. - Ugh!
Nevertheless, Willis wants to make a 6th Die Hard film before retiring the franchise, and a writer has been commissioned to write this under the dubious title Die Hardest. - After A Good Day to Die Hard, I am intensely skeptical.
It is directed by Irish action director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines (2001)).

Related posts:

John Moore: 2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Behind Enemy Lines (2001) - Solid action/war/suspense popcorn entertainer

Even the posters for John Moore's A Good Day to Die Hard are ugly and unoriginal, - especially this one, for which A Good Day to Die Hard wins the Worst Poster of the Year award from Film Excess - congratulations!

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 92 mil. $
Box office: 304.6 mil. $
= Box office success
[Distributor Fox did the smart thing of opening Die Hard 5 in Asia a week before the wide American release. There, mass audiences rarely object if a huge movie is terrible. Despite opening 1st in the US, the film's main arena was the rest of the world, where it made an impressive 237.3 mil. $ or 77 % of its total gross.]

What do you think of A Good Day to Die Hard?
Are you interested in another, perhaps last film in the series?