Review of “Hitman: Agent 47”

Back in April, I was so stoked for this movie. I fully understood it would probably turn out to be shit, but it’d at least be shit I could have fun with.

Then the second trailer came out, and I became less optimistic.

Next, the third. Slightly surprised and intrigued, but still not returned to my hype levels from the first trailer.

Then I found out the writer was Skip Woods and that Aleksander Bach was making his directorial debut with this film. This was yesterday. I was worried yesterday.

Today, I am here to tell you that it’s nowhere near as bad as the 7% on Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe. Still, it’s not very good.

Here’s the scoop: the action is enjoyable and definitely cool-looking, even if it’s extremely far-fetched. I laughed out loud during a couple of action scenes simply because of how blasphemously preposterous they were, but I was still enjoying myself. Even Skip Woods’ cheesy dialogue wasn’t enough to derail the fun, with the exception of one or two bits.

Honestly, it’s the quintessential 6.0/10 B-rate Euro-trash action movie. It’s a good enough time to justify a one-time matinee price, but I’ll probably never watch it again.

Nitpicks and gripes: there’s one dialogue bit where 47 asks his female accomplice to “try not to disassemble” his knife, and it is one of the (fortunately) rare moments during the flick where you can distinctly smell Woods’ hand in the writing like the breath of an unwanted mutt in your pantry. Secondly, there’s an action montage near the end which is accompanied by porno music. For no reason. No joke, nothing. It’s just very unfitting. Thirdly, the scene in the American embassy (the bit in all the trailers with the sniper rifle) makes no sense, as Zachary Quinto’s character is able to break out of an interrogation room with nothing but his body’s momentum. This is an embassy interrogation room, I’m pretty sure the one-way see-through windows are a bit more reinforced than that.

Unrelated, but while we’re talking about foreign films I might as well review a second movie I saw a few weeks back. It’s called Tu Veux Ou Tu Veux Pas, a French rom-com, minus most of the romance because both main characters are sex addicts and just want each other for the sake of screwing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just not very romantic when all they’re really into is repeated and constant thrusting 24/7. It’s pretty slow and I only chuckled twice, so I guess in that sense it’s not very comedic, either. I think if it were a made for TV movie, I’d probably be a little nicer to it. As things stand right now though, don’t bother.

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