Video Game Goes all Euro

Just Not Enough Blood Sleaze and Sex... but close...
by Morgan P Salvo









Hitman is a strange film. My gut feeling told me I wouldn’t like it, turns out I didn’t dislike it as much as expected. The opening intriguing credits exude a super European feel. Ave Maria is playing, kids are getting their heads shaved through a soft focused lens (foreshadowing assassin grooming), and most of the actors’ names are foreign. I was also curious to see Timothy Olyphant (“Deadwood”/“Live Free or Die Hard”) playing #47, a.k.a. “The Hitman”, since he is an engaging actor, surprisingly in this role.
The plot tries its best to be convoluted but is pretty easy to figure out. It is based on a video game, after all. Basically, the Hitman is just that, a hired assassin who has his hit-orders ordained from a computer. From the get-go we see him as a loner, content in offing people by command. When his situation is compromised and he is accused of killing the wrong man (the Russian president no less), he realizes he has been set-up, now doomed to be hit himself. Pretty soon the CIA, Interpol and the FSB (Russia’s CIA equivalent) are all involved. Then we get department heads locking horns, a body double, and an earnest chief trying to make things right (Dougray Scott). But the main thrust of the movie is to find the elusive Hitman and do away with him. Turns out there are more killers just like him out there…really making me wonder why these guys don’t invest in hats. I mean anyone in their right mind who sees a bald guy in an Armani suit with a bar-code tattooed to the back of his shaved head would simply cry “hit the Decks!! ASSASSIN ALERT!”
Despite some sight-seeing: Niger, Istanbul, Russia, Turkey, and London, it’s really the action that saves this movie…when it happens. The narrative is pretty low key, but the hyper-kinetic violence goes all out - guns blazing, blood spurting, acrobatic-fighting, and swordplay. Obvious references are made to John Woo’s “The Killer” with its two-handed pistol shooting technique, and “Reservoir Dogs” in which four similar-looking assassins on a train simultaneously point their silencers at each other but decide to be more “honorable”, resulting in fist and sword combat.Ok so there’s action, there’s intrigue. What about the nudity you ask? All good European action films have to have some nudity correct? You got that right! It comes in the form of Nika (Olga Kurylenko), in the “whore with the saddest story you ever heard” role, and the hottest outfits you’ve ever seen .A witness to the president’s demise, she becomes a foil for all traps to snare the Hitman, and provides the opportunity for him to do something nice, like protecting her. However, she could prove to be his Achilles heel, but who cares when she takes off her top a lot. Not only does he keep his guns in ice, he keeps his heart there too… perhaps another body part as well. Even with Nika trying her darndest to seduce him reminding me of a newer, hipper Maria Schnieder (“Last Tango in Paris”). Sadly, Hitman just doesn’t do sex. Personally I like my brain and blood-splattered walls mixed with some decent frontal nudity. Where was I? Oh yeah, Hitman…
There are some other notable scenes: a mini “True Romance”/”Scarface” drug and gun deal shoot ‘em up, an obvious tongue in cheek touch when #47 runs through a hotel room leaving us with a glimpse of two kids playing the Hitman game on TV and of course my favorite: a bathtub torture scene involving barb wire and electrocution, straight out of “Saw”.
I assumed the bald dude was supposed to be ultra suave, but Olyphant makes him seem soft spoken, almost confused. A kinder, gentler killer... a whole different take on someone who is never fooled…ever.
In the end, this movie also attempts to convey the answer to a deeper question, “why would a good man kill”? Easy because PlayStation told him to.

HITMAN
Starring Timothy Olyphant,Dougray Scott,Olga Kurylenko
directed by Xavier Gens
 2 stars