Hitman: Fun, But Not a Must-See
Nov 24th, 2007 by Alex
I saw Hitman on Friday night. I was surprised by the turnout at Hoyt’s; we drove there to avoid the madness of Annapolis Mall and Arundel Mills on black Friday, but still found the parking lot full. Normally the place is pretty dead, but I guess we weren’t the only ones with that idea.
One of the area’s substitute radio personalities (on account of the usual suspects being on holiday) had mentioned that the movie was based on a video game (which I didn’t know) and that it was cast with a bunch of unknown names. Just because an actor’s face isn’t plastered all over the tabloids for having a spat with their father of their ex-boyfriend’s former co-star’s baby’s momma doesn’t mean that they’re unknown.
You’ll recognize Timothy Olyphant as the drug dealing Todd Gaines from Go and the smart ass cop (”are you okay? are you sure? because you just drove through a wall”) from Gone in Sixty Seconds paired up with Delroy Lindo. It’s his first title role. Very different from the work he’s done before, and I think he handles it well.
You’ll recognize Dougray Scott as the villain from Mission: Impossible II (or perhaps as Prince Henry in Ever After). He’s engaged to Claire Forlani, the lucky bastard. Good performance from him as well, though it seems he picks up a new accent for each role.
The only exception from the top billed cast would be Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko, who’s done a few international TV titles. Her character wasn’t designed to be particular strong, moreso eye candy that has been wronged in some way. As such, she spends the majority of the movie looking like a tramp, attempting to seduce the main character, sleeping in various stages of undress, and riding in the boot.
I haven’t seen or played the video game, but the movie stands on its own. It is entertaining and fun to watch; there’s a good amount of action, gadgets, and gun play. There’s a bit of partial nudity from Ms. Kurylenko and a whole lot of no-nonsense looks and lines from the main character, the sort of cold-blooded killer whose complete lack of expression makes you chuckle a bit. It is a bit more colorful than other assassin movies of late, but then it wasn’t supposed to be horribly real. Not a must-see, but definitely a good action flick to get from NetFlix or Redbox.
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Good review on it. I am just waiting for my buddy to get back from Arizona to see it, as mandy has NO interest in seeing this movie. One thing that you didn’t mention was that the main character was also the bad guy in live free or die hard.
Not to mention he was in “Deadwood.”
I can’t get past the first level of the video game; I’ll wait for DVD.
Snay: Ditto for Deadwood, could never get into it.
My son saw the ad in the paper and went “I didn’t know they made that game into a movie.” We all have our pop cultural compass.
I haven’t been to Hoyt’s in years. AMC Columbia Mall sucked so much business away from UA Snowden that we just walk-up to any show we want. Almost nothing sells out there anymore.