It’s truly difficult to figure out how to start writing this review of the new film Hitman: Agent 47, based on the popular video game series. What is there to say about a film so shallow and joyless whose greatest accomplishment is desensitizing its viewers to violence and murder to such a degree that one leaves the theatre in an emotionless daze? This is a film that has nothing to say, and while it’s not exactly a terrible film — in that it’s competently directed and never boring — it’s one that has absolutely no artistic reason to exist.
At its core, Hitman: Agent 47 is nothing more than one of those clichés where shadowy corporations wage war against each other in non-descript European locales, though the film does attempt to humanize proceedings by focusing its attention on the woman caught in the middle. Katia van Dees (Hannah Ware, recreating the same personality-free performance she unmemorably gave on ABC’s short-lived Betrayal) is a young woman with no family who travels through Europe, scouring libraries and archives, trying to identify the man whose face she has memories of in an attempt to learn where she’s come from. Soon enough, Katia learns that she’s being hunted by both Agent 47 (Rupert Friend, Showtime’s Homeland), a hitman for the International Contracts Agency, and John Smith (Zachary Quinto, Star Trek), a member of the mysterious Syndicate International. Katia is a valuable asset, since it turns out that she’s gifted with a special ability to foresee danger before it happens. Both organizations hope to use Katia to track down her long-absent father, Dr. Peter Litvenko (Ciarán Hinds, Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy) — that man from her memories! — who founded the Agent program, which genetically engineered a team of compassionless super-assassins. Then, there’s a lot of running and shooting.
The film’s biggest issue is that, in adapting this video game for the screen, the filmmakers have brought along the most problematic quality common to this type of game — the glorification of rampant killing with no ramifications. Seemingly hundreds of anonymous non-characters are shot to death, with blood exploding from their heads and backs and spattering walls and sidewalks like the world’s most gruesome Jackson Pollock painting. Not that this film has any lofty artistic pretensions; first-time director Aleksander Bach is far more focused on the giddy, squalid excitement of these violent deaths. And don’t expect the characters to stop and think about what it means to take a human life. You’ll find no horrified guilt or breathless shock here, not even any it-was-him-or-us justification. Nope, Hitman: Agent 47 is all about showing you how cool it is to blow people’s heads off with your awesome big-ass gun. I’m hardly in a position to be playing morality police here — I’m a huge fan, for example, of horror movies and Quentin Tarantino. “Cool” on-screen deaths can be tons of fun if they’re inventive or have deeper meaning behind them. But when a film like this revels in depicting what amounts to nothing more than artless point-blank murders, when a film wants its audience to cheer as they watch a guy shoot a bunch of other guys to death, well, I find that troubling, to say the least.
Beyond that, there aren’t even any characters to root for. Ware, as previously mentioned, gives such a drab performance; however, her character is never written believably enough to make the viewer care about her — this is a woman who was abandoned as a child and seemingly has no current job, yet somehow has the financial means to trek across Europe and devote every waking moment to searching for her father. Friend’s Agent 47, meanwhile, is by necessity an empty, expressionless cypher, a man who has been engineered to feel no emotions of any kind. To be honest, his performance feels very similar to his portrayal of Peter Quinn on Homeland — not one of television’s best-developed characters, let’s admit — though minus the PTSD. Screenwriters Skip Woods (who also wrote the previous attempt to adapt Hitman into a movie in 2007, which starred Timothy Olyphant) and Michael Finch (The November Man) have floundered in every way, then. They’ve filled their script with dull, unsympathetic characters and spun an overly complex narrative out of predictable, superficial genre elements. And somehow they even managed to come up with a film whose premise is identical to that of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which opened a week earlier.
One thing that Hitman: Agent 47 has going for it is excellent use of locations. Much of the film was shot on location in Singapore, and little-known DP Óttar Guðnason’s camera flies through the skyline, making great use of the city-state’s distinct and beautiful architecture. One particular sequence shot at Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay park (Google it; it’s stunning.) is just gorgeously shot. I don’t remember ever seeing a film before that took place in Singapore, and that’s a unique quality that makes this film visually impressive and truly memorable. It’s the only reason to see the film, really. If you decide to go for it (you don’t have to), wait until you can watch it at home, and fast-forward to the exterior scenes.
OK, so my early fears were for naught — it seems like I had plenty to say about Hitman: Agent 47 after all. I even managed to write over 900 words about it. Alas, that’s a lot more than the film deserves. Skip it.
