Hit(or Miss)Man

It is hard to decide whether or not Timothy Olyphant’s performance in “Hitman” is one of the greatest ever caught on film or the worst thing since Anna Nicole Smith in “Skyscraper.” His performance is the perfect portrayal of the emotionless, expressionless, polygonal video game character the film is based on and it leads one to wonder whether he absolutely nailed it or just decided not to act.
Olyphant isn’t the only part of the film that plays perfectly into its gaming roots. It’s plot, about a highly trained hitman who works without asking questions but one day finds his conscience because of a woman is both trite and overused much like many a videogame plotline. The similarities to the games don’t stop there though. The movie is jammed packed with action sequences featuring gallons of blood and flying bodies everywhere. The hero, given the number 47 as a name by the priests who trained him to kill, uses bullets like they were water and almost always has the same outfit on. The movie even steals third person perspective shots straight from the game. Indeed, this film is one of the most loyal adaptations, at least feeling wise, to a videogame ever made.
The question is, is this a good thing? Normally it would be, because normally that is exactly what you would be expecting from this movie. Cool action sequences, a dead pan lead who spews a few one liners and tons of violence along with some nudity, since the filmmakers didn’t chicken out and made the movie R, are all included, but director Xavier Gens does such a poor job of piecing them all together, even breaking simple rules of continuity, that the film loses whatever charm it had pretty quickly and while the bullets flying and the blood spraying may keep you entertained for a while it’s hard to stay interested with Gens complete mismanagement of the action sequences, especially one with four hitmen battling it out with swords.
Giving Olyphant the benefit of the doubt about his performance he’s still too baby-faced for the role and often times seems awkward in the characters trademark suit, like a child playing dress up…with automatic weapons. Throw in a smattering of other actors who you’ve never heard of but play well into their stereotypical parts and you don’t have much backing him up in the way of being cool. Plus the fact that a bald hitman with a barcode tattooed to the back of his neck would be easily spotted and caught in a matter of minutes doesn’t add much credibility to an already ludicrous film. It’s a character design that looks cool in a videogame but doesn’t transfer over that well to film.
Still, other than the truly poor directing, there is no reason to absolutely hate this film. You get what you thought you’d get from a film simply titled “Hitman”, nothing more and nothing less. It might even be worth seeing simply to decide if Olyphant was intentionally that good in the character or just horribly, horribly bad.
3 out of 5. Despite my bashing it is an OK action film.

Trailer