Let me start off by saying that I personally enjoy video game movie adaptations. While it doesn't give the same feel of exploration or achievement, some do have a genuinely intriguing narrative, and a good set of action sequences that rival some of the best in combat gameplay, cutscenes, and quick time events. Hitman: Agent 47 is one of those movies. It completely separates itself from the game, which is all about stealth, subterfuge, sabotage, and timing, by being a guns-blazing action fest. It has a good cast performance, while a little dry, and a plot that is taken loosely from the game's lore, but with more of a focus on a single set, rather than the action and stealth seen in any of the Hitman video games.
I think this movie is a fun, action packed romp, with ties to a popular game franchise that makes fans simultaneously cheer and groan. With all this in mind, I proudly give Hitman: Agent 47 a Bad Good. Bad, because video game movies unanimously suck in terms of quality, but Good, because they vary in terms of personal subjective enjoyment. It doesn't matter how well it is made, or how much money is poured into it, some movies are just destined to suck straight from the drawing board, but they can make up for the quality with the cliche.
Hitman: Agent 47 follows the adventures of Agent 47 (Played by Rupert Friend), a genetically enhanced super soldier, who is trained and used as an elite assassin. He is assigned a contract for a young woman named Katia Van Dees (Played by Hannah Ware), who is the daughter of the man who created the Agent program. 47 is assigned to hunt her down, clashing with John Smith (Zachary Quinto), a man working for a group known as the Syndicate. He reveals that she is one of the most advanced agents ever made, and uses her to track down her father, so that the Syndicate can use his research to make a super soldier army. It is up to Katia and Agent 47 to stop them from making this army, because the plot demands that they be the only competent characters.
This movie is strange, but fun. In a purely subjective sense, it is a great movie. Terrible quality, but fun to watch, a few memorable scenes, and all around a genuinely good time. It uses many different, almost cliche, tactics that draw the viewer in, and it makes sure that you know exactly what you paid to see. It is nowhere near the video game, all it shares is the name and the characters. It is not the first adaptation of the franchise, the first attempt at a Hitman movie coming out around 8 years earlier, in 2007. The movie has a bunch of neat action scenes that make the movie akin to Fast and Furious or some sort of gung ho cop flick, but swears it is basing itself off of a game that is made for stealth.
From a more objective perspective, this movie is a pile of flaming garbage. The acting is mostly flat with one or two good characters giving a halfhearted effort, and it is an action movie based off of a stealth video game franchise. Take into perspective how bad video game movies have been. Doom, Tomb Raider (All three of them), and god forbid we speak its name, Super Mario Bros. The time is just not ripe for this level of adaptation, we do not have the ability to offer a similar experience to how a game is played through the magic of cinema. With the problem of being a video game adaptation, and a halfhearted effort on behalf of everyone in that movie, it is just objectively not a good film.
Overall, I enjoyed this film. I would recommend checking it out, but it is definitely not for everyone. If you find it to be a pile of crap, then good, you never have to watch it again. If you do enjoy it however, you have a new movie that you can quote and recommend to your friends. Who knows, you might also even check out the games that the film was based on, and enjoy playing those too.
No comments:
Post a Comment