Hitman was not a hit, man!

I'm a little behind in my reviews I know. I'm trying to assimilate all the material I missed from 2007 before I do the 2007 Whopper Awards (which may actually replace the Oscars this year due to the WGA strike). Chronologically, the final movie released in 2007 and thus elegable for consideration is Hitman.

This was a movie that was followed both on the 2IGTV website and on the 2IGTV show itself. I expect nothing from a video game franchise to a movie no matter what the budget nor who the producer, director or the cast is. And this movie won't change my opinion of that whatsoever. It's shit, but by God it's truly magnificent shit and has earned a place in my DVD collection.

In Hitman, Timothy Olyphant takes on the role of Agent 47 a character butchered for his big screen outing. Somehow Olyphant (39) looks about fifteen with the shaved head. How an accomplished actor from Deadwood (or even his performance in Die Hard 4.0) could somehow loose almost all his acting talent for this movie, I do not know. I don't blame him entirely however as the movie had an idiotic first-time* clueless director in the form of Xavier Gens, yes, a frog!

The story was a load of hogwash and I'm not even going to try to explain it here as that would dignify it. The plot has more holes than my assault rifle target after a day on the range and if you were paying attention to it (and I'm not saying you should) you'll be left with a few questions once the end credits begin to scroll. "What the fuck happened to the guy in the bath?" is a biggie! Poor Skip Swordfish Woods probably didn't have a lot of material to work with as the 47 character by definition is an emotionless single-minded killing machine far better suited to the gaming world than on a movie screen where he essentially has to get ideas, form relationships and be "human". I hope Mr. Woods will be more faithful to the G.I.Joe characters he's written for the movie of that franchise.

I hear people asking now: "But Creedon, why are you going to add this to your DVD collection?" Well it's quite simple really, for all it's many faults. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. As I said; I don't expect much from video game translations, so with that in mind when you do get some serious action, no matter how uncohesive it may be, with fantastic explosions, juicy on-screen death, a healthy use of automatic weapons and of course when a hot piece of ass like Olga Kurylenko gets her kit off for an unnecessary amount of time, then you just have to say: "I wanna see that again!"

Final verdict: A dumb movie aimed at dumber people who don't know that London is in England (you'll get that joke if you see the movie), it should have had more heavy-metal tunes instead of dialog, yet it will satisfy "longings for tough-guy posturing, sadistic violence, blatant misogyny and incoherent plotting"**, bring it on!

Colonel Creedon Rating: ****1/2

* He only directed French shit which doesn't count in the real world.
** Quoted from Jeffrey Westhoff, Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL).