Oh, I had such high hopes for this movie. Like most probably did, I watched the trailers and smiled; the short scenes of utter bedlum giving a redeeming glimmer back to the fans after the failed adaptation of the last. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t meant to be. The ingredients seemed to be there. The casting of Rupert Friend was a good choice in my book, with his stoic composure and the calmness he radiated amidst the hailing of bullets, and with those sly looks; the little upturning of his mouth when he was amused. I loved him but even at that they just couldn’t pull it together.
I think I’m getting ahead of myself. For those of you who don’t know, as few as you probably are, Hitman: Agent 47 is the second attempt at a movie adaptation of the popular game of the same title. 47, which is his actual name, is a man cloned and designed to be the perfect assassin. He’s intelligent, composed, almost emotionless and utterly efficient at what he does. He is literally the perfect killer. The first attempt to make an adaptation of this game was back in 2007, and although Hitman for all intents and purposes was a bit of a turkey, it still seems like they made enough money out of it to considering allowing another shot. Hitman: Agent 47, directed by Aleksander Bach, was that such attempt. 
Now, I’m going to privately weep as we go through all the ways in which it pretty much shot itself in the foot.
I’ll start by saying that 96 minutes is absolutely nowhere near enough time to do what they were trying to do with this movie. Not even remotely close. On top of the issues with it’s length and rushed narrative, somewhere in their heads I think The Bourne Identity was playing when they were writing this, The Matrix too, and possibly even X-Men, because they pulled elements from all of these and clumsily stuffed them in. From the guy Agent 47 can’t kill because someone injected him with a liquid metal which hardened and basically makes him bulletproof (yup!) to a scene where Agent 47 is coming through the metal detector and it literally looks like it could have been taken from The Matrix lobby scene. There are actually parts in this movie that look like they’ve been hastily pilfered from better films. Which is an absolute shame. Scandalous even. Mainly because I think had they put more time and effort into the script and screenplay they could have made something fantastic. I’ll get to the characters in a bit, but lets just say that Katia (Hannah Ware) and Agent 47 are the two of the only things keeping this film from literally being the worst film I’ve seen in the cinema this year.
The plot in Agent 47 is so riddled with holes I can’t even defend it. It just is. Honestly, I’ve read bad fanfiction with more of an idea of what it was doing. It is an utter mess in story and tone. And that’s saying something. Summing it up, some bad guys want to make more Agents, a lot more and they’re looking for the scientist who originally created them because they suck and generally have no idea what they’re doing. They use an old photograph of him and his daughter, Katia, to extrapolate what she’d look like as an adult and track her down in the hopes she’d be able to find him. Don’t ask me why they couldn’t do that with him. I really don’t know. I’m not even sure why they’d be certain she’d even be able to do that. Just the beginning of the problems unfortunately. Either way, she’s revealed to not simply be his daughter, but also the last 
thing the Agent program created. Essentially a super soldier who has no idea they’re a super soldier. With a certain pronunciation her full name is even French for ninety.
On their own, Katia and Agent 47 strike imposing, if not underdeveloped, characters. When I realized that the films female lead wasn’t there to be arm candy and wasn’t being used as a tool to strike some sort of emotion in Agent 47, I literally could have wept with joy. Whatever realization Agent 47 has come to about the moral questions involved in his life and what he wants to do with it, he’s already had them before this. She’s not there as a tool to change him. Despite the issues, Rupert Friend and Hannah Mare are great actors who really, really tried to bring these characters to life. You can tell. A problem because the narrative just didn’t allow for or accommodate it. Script was sparse between lacklustre action scenes and when they did speak the script fell flat. It was hard work it seems for these actors to make the dialogue work. They salvaged their characters mostly in the silent moments. Agent 47’s little quirky looks among my favourite. He’s a man that seems like he could have a very dark, very dry sense of humour if given the chance. But like the film in whole, he wasn’t given a damn thing to work with. Zachary Quinto has a part as a mindless flunky and appears to be basically playing a rather lame game of ‘who’s the better killer?’. I’m going to give you a hint, love, it isn’t you. The rest of the cast may as well not exist. If you see them it’s brief, and when you do they come across as forgettable.
Hitman: Agent 47 was a film that ended before it even began. I don’t know whether what I saw was what was left of another longer screenplay after it was torn down, or simply a lazy, half-assed attempt by a writer who wasn’t all that into it. The trailer literally shows you pieces of all the best parts of the movie. If you hadn’t seen the trailers it would be a slightly bland, mindless action flick. I had more fun outside posing with the cardboard cut-out in the cinema afterwards.
If you’ve seen the trailers, there’s probably little reason to actually see the film.
If Agent 47 was real, he’d take the contract on this drivel for free.
