Hitman: Agent 47

I know that it’s purely a numbers game when it all comes down to it, but when you really look at it, how hard can it be to get constant work in Hollywood? All you have to do is be in decent shape, have the right agent, and take advantage of your opportunities when they present themselves. I say this because I see a ton of movies every year and unless we are talking about a Stanley Kubrick or a Werner Herzog film, you can be a fairly average to below average actor and get some pretty decent roles. Keanu Reeves is the ultimate example of this. But even on a smaller scale, someone like Paul Walker made millions of dollars by simply saying the word bro and pretending like he knew anything at all about cars.

In fact, Walker was supposed to be the lead in Hitman: Agent 47 but was replaced by Rupert Friend (Homeland) for obvious reasons. Friend is no Charlie Chapman himself but he looks like the next Tom Hardy when compared to his counterparts in this movie. It seriously felt as though they just took all of the extras from The Walking Dead and cast them in major roles in this movie. And speaking of awful actors, can they kill off Glen already??? I know they have to keep their minority quota up but Black dudes disappear off that show with the quickness all of the time.

Anyway, the point is, this movie might have actually been considered a decent flick by most uptight critics out there had they simply cast someone with some flare or moxie to be the leads in this film. I know that agents aren’t supposed to really experience any emotions but hell, Tom Hardy didn’t speak for 90% of Mad Max: Fury Road and he put in one of the best performances of his career!

Having said all of that, I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Agent 47. It was as if they knew they had a limited budget, so they just said screw it and chose to spend all of the money they had for actors on Ciaran Hinds. They then took the leftover money from that budget and spent it on an unnecessary, but awesome none the less, helicopter scene where it crashes into a building and takes out a ton of random henchmen in the film’s climax. What can I say? I’m a sucker for random and pointless violence, in the context of a movie that is.

Director Aleksander Bach knew exactly what he had to work with when he was making this film: a derivative script, B and C list actors, and a projected late summer release date. So why waste time trying to make a video game movie an Oscar worthy masterpiece? Why not just have fun with it and make it as silly and over the top as you possibly can? Well that’s exactly what he did.

If you have ever seen any of Resident Evil movies and actually enjoyed them, then all you have to do is just take the same look and feel of those movies and substitute secret agents for zombies. Agent 47 is about a genetically engineered soldier who has advanced physical traits that make him unbelievably skilled in combat. But he lacks normal human emotions like compassion, fear, and love. And it’s the lack of these emotions that made soldiers like him more dangerous than their creators could have ever imagined. So they decided to put a stop to the program.

Well a secret evil organization has decided to try and reopen the program. But in order to do so, they need to locate the program’s head scientist who has since gone into hiding for his own protection. They believe they have found the key to finding him through his daughter Katia but they must get to her before Agent 47 does.

Again, I want to reiterate that this movie isn’t good in the traditional sense by any means, but if you like cheesy action movies, you’ll love it. It’s full of terrible one liners, ridiculous technology that makes absolutely no sense no matter how much you try and suspend reality, and excellent gun fights.

After the disaster that was the Timothy Olyphant Hitman, I wasn’t expecting much. So I must say that I was pleasantly surprised when I didn’t want to walk out of the theater within the first half hour. So for all of the movie snobs out there, I rate this movie as WEAK. But for us action junkies, I give it a rating of kind of pretty FRESH!