Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) - 4K UHD Review

Review:

*Originally written February 10th, 2019*

Wow, I'd not planned on revisiting this since its release in 2015, but thanks to my compulsive problem of buying whatever film comes my way and out of morbid curiosity to rewatch it, I ended up buying this on 4K against my better judgement, and to no surprise, it is just awful.

How do they keep getting the Hitman license so wrong? I'm not sure if this is a sequel to the 2007 Timothy Olyphant film at all, or just a straight up reboot? Not that it matters, as the actors are changed and I cannot think of a single reference to the previous film. I spent a lot of this just wishing I was just watching the 2007 film again. That film wasn't great, but compared to this, it seems like a damn masterpiece.

Everything going on here is just not what the Hitman games are about. The games are a series of missions where you have to creatively use your environments to take out your targets as stealthily as possible with a loosely connected narrative sending you to the next mission. There is not a single hit of this in Agent 47. It's a mindless display of awful CGI action, that is poorly shot and lacks any sort of impact. 

Every single bit of action is completely overblown, ugly and utterly stupid. People want to see Agent 47 carefully planning a mission and executing it flawlessly, not getting into gunfights in the middle of streets and purposely getting himself arrested, giving his name to the police and getting caught on camera. It's like the makers of this film have never even played the games.

God knows what they were thinking bringing back Skip Woods to write this mess. A man I'm convinced doesn't exist and is just a pseudonym used by studios to attach a name to a script that a 12 year old submitted. Honestly, look at this "Man's" history of films. A Good Day to Die Hard, Hitman, X-Men: Origins and Sabotage. Oof, this guy is just awful and I don't know who he is blowing to keep getting work in Hollywood.

The story here is just nonsense. Like I said, the Hitman games are rarely known for their stories, but at least they keep it simple and straight-forward. This is just an insane level of clones, cyborgs and conspiracy that I was pretty checked out by towards the end. I did laugh at just how bat-shit insane some of this crap got, but it's also so barbarically stupid and annoying. 

The only bright spot here is Rupert Friend, who does a commendable job as Agent 47, but everything they do with his character is just wrong. I've always felt to do a Hitman film they should have Agent 47 as the antagonist, a Terminator like figure throughout the film, rather than the clear-cut good guy they make him out to be here. Which is another problem translating the character to film. He's just not an interesting lead, he's a cold, calculated killer that doesn't say much, making for a very uninteresting lead. 


I know this franchise is being rebooted as a streaming platform show, which hopefully work a hell of a lot better than these awful films that are only good for a cheap laugh. When will we ever get truly great video-game movies? The nicest thing I can say about this is it least has an excellent 4K release, this should be expected from a film this glossy and new. And part of me sickly wants the 2007 film to get a 4K release at some point too....

3/10 Dans

Hitman: Agent 47 is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:

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