HITMAN is another prime example of why certain things that make a video game good don't necessarily translate into a good motion picture. As I've argued in the past, you can take tired b-movie plot mechanics and spice it up by putting you in control of how it plays out in the form of a video game, but once you translate that to the big screen, you've just gone back to making a tired b-movie. Now I've never actually played the game HITMAN is based on but I am familiar with it enough to know that when you take the same concept and remove the aspect that allows you to control the actions of the main character, what you're left with... See what I wrote in the previous sentence.

HITMAN is about a trained from childhood assassin who works for a super clandestine organization that appears to have ties to the Catholic Church known only as The Organization. They're so clandestine, so impossible to track down, that they stick their logo on every single weapon and device used by their employees. The Organization is so super secretive that every one of their killers is a bald guy with a barcode tattooed on the back of his head dressed in a three-piece suit; you know, so that they'll be inconspicuous and not easily recognized when they show up to assassinate someone. The Organization will remain top secret even by the end of the film since the script isn't interested in letting us learn much of anything about them outside of some brief backstory hints in the opening credits. Downplay the only aspect of the story that might add a new wrinkle to worn out material and all you're left with is an unnecessary action flick suffering from a serious case of "been there, done that" syndrome.

The plot that is barely worth delving into has the titular hitman hired to assassinate a Russian politico; only after doing so the guy turns up alive, having been replaced with a double. Since the nameless hitman is the only one who knows that this Russian political big shot isn't the actual Russian political big shot he snuffed out, the Russian nogoodnicks behind the scheme set out to kill the hitman; I guess because they're afraid this no-named, cloak-and-dagger, international assassin whose free will is constantly in question and who is currently wanted by Interpol might go to the press or something and spill the beans about the assassination shenanigans going on in Russia. Soon, not only are Russian baddies trying to kill him, several of the hitman's eggheaded, barcoded brethren show up trying to kill him as well.

This plot manages to be both simplistic and jumbled all at the same time by making the modern mistake of trying to be all twisty yet there's barely any insight as to why the villains are going to this much trouble or that anything's at stake aside from the life of a title character we're given little reason to care about.

The hitman's quest to figure out what's going on and why leads him to a frequently naked Russian hooker who was the private property of the assassinated Russian big wig. Being that he's seriously sexually repressed - a victim of his Catholic upbringing, no doubt - the hitman finds himself attracted to the hooker even as he works hard to keep her at a distance. That becomes all the more difficult since this Slavic harlot wastes little time going from wanting to tell him to go screw himself to actually wanting to screw him. If there's one thing I've learned from watching movies, there's no better woman to cure a man's wounded soul than a whore.

An Interpol agent has arrived in Russia hot on the trail of the hitman who many of his own colleagues believe to be merely a ghost, a fictional super assassin who doesn't really exist. I figured this Interpol agent character existed to help unravel a good deal of the hitman and The Organization's backstory and would ultimately like the cop on Jason Statham's trail in THE TRANSPORTER, end up allying himself with the very person he's been after. I was wrong on both counts. In other words, this character is every bit as redundant as every other aspect of HITMAN.

With a mundane storyline and not terribly exciting action scenes, HITMAN is a movie almost every bit as generic as its title implies. The action set pieces are rather ho-hum, nowhere near the level of similar stuff scene in films like THE PROFESSIONAL or THE TRANSPORTER films, like the plot also suffering from a serious case of "been there, done that". The director tries ever so hard to make things cool with stylish direction that's never as stylish as it thinks it is. Sometimes he even attempts to evoke memories of the game itself, but, seriously now, how much cool posturing, pointless slo-mo, and third-person POV shots of the back of the head of a bald guy with a barcode tattooed on it walking down a hallway must we see? For that matter, an attempted in-joke where the hitman crashes through the window into the apartment where some kids are playing the Hitman video game, that was just lame.



But the biggest problem with HITMAN and the primary reason why the movie was doomed to failure regardless can be traced back to the miscasting of Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47, the only name the hairless hitman ever gets. It's not that Olyphant is a bad actor; it's just that Olyphant simply does not have that "it" factor required to pull off a bad ass character of this type. Having never seen a single episode of Deadwood, in which he apparently played a tough guy, maybe he can pull off such a role but just didn't this time out. All I know is that Olyphant was the weakest link as the bad guy in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (to be fair, he was primarily the victim of a poorly scripted villain) and now he brings nothing to a role that requires a serious degree of bad assery. The hitman is also suffering from something of a crisis of conscience, another bit of characterization that doesn't work since he never exudes the personality of being anywhere near the ruthless assassin he's initially supposed to be. Olyphant's face doesn't have enough grizzled character, his voice doesn't possess the necessary gravitas, and his presence lacks... presence. Every look, every word out of his mouth, his mere presence should instill a sense of this being a seriously dangerous individual not to be trifled with. With his head shaved and fancy clothing, Olyphant comes across less like an emotionless perfect assassin and more like the answer to the question of what the lead singer of Right Said Fred would look like if he dressed like a mafia don. I wouldn't have been at all shocked if he'd begun singing "I'm Too Sexy"; he was certainly dressed for it.

This was a role that desperately needed a Vin Diesel or a Jason Statham or someone, anyone, who could have given this role the aura that it needed. Heck, shave Kiefer Sutherland's head, stamp a barcode on it, and let's see how much more intimidating he'd come across shaking down a guy chained up in a bathtub rigged to electrocute him than Timothy Olyphant, who I'm sorry to say, just doesn't cut it, sounding way to low key and looking like the world's best dressed chemo patient. I never bought into him as this hitman character for one second even as I'd watch him gun guys down at will or defeat multiple adversaries in a sword fight and without that element the movie has no chance of working. If you buy into Olyphant as the character - how I don't know - then you might enjoy HITMAN. But to me Olyphant's Agent 47 came across as just a guy - a guy who, frankly, looked like the third runner up in a Billy Zane look-a-like contest. He just happened to be the third runner-up in a Billy Zane look-a-like contest who happened to be a precision killing machine. Heck, why not just have gone ahead and cast Billy Zane while they were at it?

There was enough going on that I wasn't totally bored by the film, but that doesn't mean I was engaged by anything that I was watching. I used the word "redundant" earlier and I can't think of any better word to sum it all up. There's no reason for HITMAN to exist other than it sold millions in video game form and there's really no reason to watch HITMAN rather than just stick to playing the game.

When it all comes down to it, the movie, much like the title character, is just an empty suit.