The formula is not that far removed from James Bond except there's a hole at its center. Agent 47, played by a virtually expressionless Timothy Olyphant, is a soulless, emotionally dead protagonist.
Hitman (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:92
Fresh:14
Rotten:78
Average Rating:3.7/10
Consensus: Hitman features the unfortunate combination of excessive violence, incoherent plot, and inane dialogue.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
US Box Office: $39,617,876
Synopsis: Based on the popular Playstation 2 game, HITMAN chronicles the frame-up and retribution-packed odyssey of Number 47 (Timothy Olyphant), a bald assassin raised from birth to be a killer and tattooed... Based on the popular Playstation 2 game, HITMAN chronicles the frame-up and retribution-packed odyssey of Number 47 (Timothy Olyphant), a bald assassin raised from birth to be a killer and tattooed with a barcode on the back of his head. There's lots of BOURNE SUPREMACY-style flash-edits and superhuman stunt work as 47 seeks to find out why moderate Russian presidential nominee Belicoff (Ulrich Thomsen) was the client for his own assassination, a hit that 47 pulled off perfectly, except for one hitch: the target's still alive. For romantic interest we have Olga Kurylenko as a foxy Russian prostitute sold into slavery by the evil Belicoff. She and 47 wind up on the lam together but they'll never be safe as long as Belicoff is still alive. Meanwhile, Interpol agent Mike Whittier (Dougray Scott) has been tracking 47 for years; he's on the scent and about to close in. Luc Besson was the producer on this, and fans of his TRANSPORTER, THE PROFESSIONAL and LA FEMME NIKITA films will eat it up, as it's got the same narrative arc, same hyper-kinetic shoot-em-up flavor, vividly saturated colors, swooping camerawork, tightly choreographed fights, and lots of blood flying from the copious bullet wounds. Vin Diesel executive produced, and one wonders what stopped his big bald head from filling the screen in the lead, but no matter, as Olyphant does a thorough job, speaking in a measured drawl that recalls, of all people, Clint Eastwood in his DIRTY HARRY days. [More]
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko, Robert Knepper
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko, Robert Knepper, Ulrich Thomsen, Henry Ian Cusick, Michael Offei
Director: Xavier Gens
Director: Xavier Gens
Screenwriter: Skip Woods
Producer: Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, Charles Gordon, Adrian Askarieh
Composer: Geoff Zanelli
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Reviews for Hitman
Based on the video game franchise of the same title, Hitman exploits every action-flick cliché imaginable and still manages to be dull.
There's enough intelligence behind it that you don't feel you're just waiting to hit the reset button.
It delivers top-notch action, dazzling gunplay and lots of fireworks. What more could we ask for?
A movie so bland it's hard to believe it was inspired by anything more than a Wikipedia entry on 'action thrillers.'
This is a script written with the sensibility of a geeky 12-year-old boy and then dumbed-down some. More than some.
You know how people will sometimes describe a bad action movie as being like watching someone else play a video game? This one is so uninvolving that watching it is more like listening to someone reading out loud from the game's instruction manual.
Plays like a music video without the music, a spectacle of shiny weapons, spurting blood, and Jesus Christ poses that would have benefited from more overlaid songs and less blabber.
An overcooked time killer that finds bad acting, bad direction, bad cinematography, and bad screenwriting in a furious race to dominate the running time. I'd call it a four-way tie.
Abysmal in the extreme, Hitman is 100 minutes of soul-crushing nothingness.
If there is someone out there willing to support Hitman and who believes that it conforms to the basic attributes of a cinematic experience, then there is something wrong with you.
Hitman has no more imagination than its title, which just as easily could have been The Bourne Idiocy or Mission: Possible and Boring.
Hitman may represent some progress in the video game adaptation genre, but it's not enough to recommend.
Hitman is exactly the kind of movie you'd expect it to be. The bad kind.
It's just one blazing gun battle, knife fight and torture scene after another, staged in a vaguely tongue-in-cheek Tarantino style by French director Xavier Gens, with cardboard characters, Ed Wood dialogue and the storytelling values of a cockfight.
A Eurotrashy vidgame knockoff that misses its target by a mile. Numbingly unthrilling as it lurches from one violent encounter to another, the pic's dark roots in an electronic, non-dramatic medium are plain to see.
Hitman was based on a video game, which tells you everything to know about this film. Well, that and the fact that it was originally conceived as a vehicle for Vin Diesel.
All a goof. Revealing the pragmatic side of the CG-assisted filmmaker, [director] Gens makes a movie that seems entirely computer generated.
Sluggish, humorless and pointlessly graphic, it will appeal to only the most desperate genre junkie.
Latest News for Hitman
October 28, 2009:
Xavier Gens Will Cope with Fallout ![]()
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June 24, 2009:
Fox Hires Kyle Ward for Hitman Sequel ![]()
Fox is gearing up for a "Hitman" sequel -- and according to IESB's sources, the studio has hired Kyle Ward to write the script. More...
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