Rent Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)
3.0 of 5 from 189 ratings
1h 32min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Rupert Friend stars in this exhilarating action adventure based on the award-winning video game series. A genetically engineered assassin with superhuman abilities, 47 (Rupert Friend), and an equally gifted young woman (Hannah Ware) turn the tables on a sinister organisation that's out to create an army of unstoppable killers.
- Actors:
- Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Angelababy, Dan Bakkedahl, Charlene Beck, Michael Bornhütter, Melissa Broughton, Nils Brunkhorst, Michaela Caspar, Alvin Chan, Michael Corcoran, Manuel Depta, Andrew DiBartolomeo, Georg Ebinal, Jörg Ellmer, Waye Leon Goh, Matthias Günther, Jesse Hergt, Ciarán Hinds
- Directors:
- Aleksander Bach
- Producers:
- Adrian Askarieh, Charles Gordon, Skip Woods, Alex Young
- Writers:
- Skip Woods, Michael Finch, Morten Iversen, Peter Gjellerup Koch
- Studio:
- 20th Century Fox
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Thrillers
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 26/02/2016
- Run Time:
- 92 minutes
- Languages:
- English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.35:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- (0) All
- Bonus:
- Deleted Scenes
- The Hit Counter
- Re-Imagining Hitman
- Hitman: Agent 47 Comic
- Making of the Comic Book
- Promotional Featurettes
- Stills Galleries
- Ultimate Action: Staging the Fights
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 11/04/2016
- Run Time:
- 92 minutes
- Languages:
- English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.39:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
More like Hitman: Agent 47
Reviews (2) of Hitman: Agent 47
An atrocious, boring & pointless film, which squanders the promise of the 1st one - Hitman: Agent 47 review by TB
When it was announced that there was to be a film adaption of the wildly successful Hitman video games, there was the well-deserved skepticism & cynicism. By 2007, there had been multiple previous attempts at bringing/adapting often stratospherically successful video games to the big screen, although the motivation was almost always to see how much more money could be squeezed out of the faithful fans rather than making something great. And because this was the motivation (alongside no doubt the arrogance of Hollywood producers & the studio chiefs, basically thinking “This film stars this beloved game character/is set in that narrative world, so shove out some schlocky script that was written by someone in a few days who has in all likelihood never even played the game they are adapting, then watch the money roll in,”) the results were almost always unwatchable & often did huge damage to the game’s reputation as well. Uwe Boll was the worst offender, churning out dud after painful dud, films which were pretty much unwatchable.
However, when the 1st Hitman came out, things were different. Hiring Timothy Olyphant as 47 was a stroke of absolute genius, having already firmly established his credentials & reputation for intensity/presence in Deadwood, plus the casting of Dougray Scott as the antagonist meant there was serious talent on the screen, not just bit-part actors who said yes to get screen time. And finally, there was no watering down of the violence/sanitising the film to achieve a 12A rating. The result was a film which, even in 2024, I still think is the best video game movie adaptation ever. Whilst it was silly, far-fetched & often implausible, it was also fun.
So when the inevitable sequel was green lit (which it always would be after the 1st film grossed over 5 times its budget,) there was some interest to see what would happen next. But this film not only destroys all the good work the 1st movie started, it almost seems like it is in competition with Boll’s output to be the worst possible adaptation imaginable.
I almost don’t know where to begin. Rupert Friend is totally, utterly & completely miscast as Agent 47. He looks like someone going to a fancy dress party who bought the costume, shaved his head & was told by his friends “Errrr, sure you look like him…” In no way is he intimidating, threatening, imposing or ominous. And the longer I watched, the more out of place he was. The script is atrocious as well. I appreciate that the 1st film wouldn’t win any screenwriting Oscars, but it was enjoyable & also had a plot that you could understand. I genuinely could not tell you what happened in the 30 or so minutes that I could tolerate watching this, or how it formed anything that could be called a storyline. There are some action scenes which didn’t work, either because it was just too stupid to even be halfway possible, or because I didn’t in any way buy Friend’s performance.
After about half an hour, and almost at the same time, me & my friend who I was watching it with both looked at each other & said “This is rubbish, let’s watch something else.” And I felt like sending the studio a bill for the time I had wasted & would never get back. But, like the many previous video game adaptations, this film was only ever designed to be a money spinner, with the added boost that it was the sequel to a beloved & well-regarded (by the fans, not critics,) 1st film, which is why it had far more goodwill than these movies usually have.
And finally, as if to really hammer home & prove the point that these films are designed to be nothing more than ringing cash tills, after the panning of this film, it was tentatively announced that there was to be a film universe with multiple other video game characters. Because in Hollywood, when an adaptation with one character fails, the obvious answer is to make another film stuffed with as many as possible, to appeal to/piss off even more fans…
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Bang Bang Bang - Hitman: Agent 47 review by NC
Guns and superhuman skills in killing anything that walks. Sounds familiar? Come back Sean Connery with 2 good fists.
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Critic review
Hitman: Agent 47 review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
Roger Ebert remarked that the 2007 Hitman movie stood right on the threshold between video games and art. That may have been the highest praise he’s bestowed upon a movie based on a video game - a media he referred to as anything but art. Whether it was the leading performance of Timothy Olyphant or the direction of Xavier Gens, there was something to that movie adaptation of IO Interactive’s video game that seemed to tip the scales. But any hope of the Hitman franchise perhaps being the one to launch video game adapted movies out of the mediocrity curse are dashed by this sequel.
Missing from this sequel is Timothy Olyphant, replaced by the lesser presence of Rupert Friend. Slipping into a suit and going bald with the iconic barcode on the back of his head, Friend just doesn’t fit into the role of Agent 47. Here is a character that is supposed to be seen as the Terminator of secret agents and just comes across as a young man playing dressup. His mission - should you choose to buy into it - involves tracking down agent clones trained to be the perfect assassins. This leads to hyper-aware sleeper soldier Katia (Hannah Ware) and super hard-to-kill soldier John Smith (Zachary Quinto). Katia finds herself uncovering a secret plot that lead to the disappearance of her father, the development of a super-soldier drug, an evil syndicate and I’m bored.
Heavy action scenes favor character development in this picture. There’s no time for witty banter or building of relationships - not when there are car chases to be had and goons to slaughter. Director Aleksander Bach throws many wild sequences at the screen including turbines that suck up the bad guys and cars that smash through walls. But there’s an implausibly ridiculous nature to it all that keeps all the action firmly juvenile. At one point Agent 47 is fleeing from secret agents when his car is harpooned by multiple hitmen on different buildings - holding the car down so they can zipline down the ropes. Why were all the bad guys so perfectly placed for a car they didn’t know would run directly through that intersection? The answer is that they needed to be in place so that Rupert Friend could perform a cliche shootout where he spins around shooting two pistols.
I know I’m supposed to turn my brain off for these moments, but my grey matter politely asked to come back in when it realized there were no interesting characters. Hannah Ware is a complete bore - trying to become an agent so that she can be just as bland as Agent 47. And though Zachary Quinto played a villain for years on Heroes, he can’t seem to evoke that evil charm with such a dull character to work with. What would you expect with a character named John Smith?
Perhaps the most baffling aspect of all this is trying to decipher just who this picture is intended for. It doesn’t follow much of the secretive nature of the video games to appease its die-hard fans and it doesn’t serve up enough creative action to satiate the thrill-seeking audience. There was most likely some executive meddling to attempt to please both sides of the aisle - resulting in a movie that entertains neither. Best guess on the intended audience? The younger crowd who has yet to see more coherent and intense action movies.
Hitman: Agent 47 is as cold and emotionless as its protagonist - getting in and out to fulfill its job without any surprises. It’s a product so artificially conceived that I begin to wonder if my reviews have become just as mechanical. I can’t really muster up any hate or eye-rolling for a picture such as this. It just does exactly what you’d expect - bore with a plot that's old hat and action scenes that sounded better on paper or in storyboards. And though I don’t like going into movies expecting to have a bad time, my reaction was mostly what I expected. I stamp this video game movie with the mark of low quality yet again, hoping I won’t have to do the same with the next. Seriously, I REALLY want a video game movie that isn’t a-typically cloned from this garbage of a template.