2.5 stars (out of 5)
2007’s original Hitman had a certain dumb style and some amusing danger in the form of star Timothy Olyphant, and yet this reboot/rehash/whatever isn’t even up to that dopey standard, no matter how many extras are shot, beaten, impaled, skewered, shredded, crushed and defenestrated (look it up).
Again based on a computer game (a very bad sign, of course), this has the complicated backstory to it all related over the opening credits, which is really annoying if you’re trying to read them. But, well, anyway, it seems that some secret organisation has been breeding and programming ‘Agents’ so that they turn into bald, barcoded, snappily-dressed, psychopathic political assassins (a sort of human Terminator, but with better clothes), and 47 (English actor Rupert Friend, although it might have been Paul Walker) is the most feared and famous.
Before we get into too much ultra-violence with him, however, we’re also introduced to Katia (Hannah Ware), an odd girl in Berlin obsessed with her missing Dad and also given to weird precognitive glimpses of the future, which come in handy when 47 comes after her and she must be protected by stranger John Smith (Zachary ‘Spock’ Quinto, obviously having fun). Dozens of wannabe-spectacular (and perhaps cut around by censors?) deaths later and we get the twist you surely (yawn…) saw coming, and suddenly we’re then off to Singapore, which looks pretty cool by night and where 47, Katia, Smith and about 39672 security guards, soldiers and cops collide for endless, usually dully CGI action, none of which has any real punch whatsoever.
Witlessly, but oh-so-flashily directed by first-time Polish filmmaker Aleksander Bach, who knows how to stage ludicrously graphic carnage and intense but tedious gunplay, this is drearily notable for including the thumping action epic’s two greatest clichés…
1) The baddies come after 47 and Katia with more firepower than the Second World War and yet, somehow, our ‘heroes’ never seem to quite get hurt, and
2) Even in this day and age, it’s quite comforting to see that goons will always politely line up to get killed.
I Wake Up Screening 