Hitman (Unrated Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Hitman (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: good movie
Summary: 4 Stars
Plenty of action. Fast pace through the end.
Nude Olga Kurylenko is wild and beautiful, but always not enough.
Movie Review: Slightly less awful than I expected.
Summary: 3 Stars
HITMAN was better than I expected. It's still not a good movie, but it wasn't quite the dreck-fest I feared. While still a piece of nonsense, I actually grew to like Timothy Olyphant's performance enough to forgive many other failings of the film.
I've never played the video game, and cannot comment on its success transferring to film.
HITMAN shows us, in the opening credit sequence (with Ave Maria playing in the background for no good reason, except, I suppose, that it's always a little haunting) that there is a society that exists to take young children, remove them from society, and turn them into passionless, soulless killing machines. An assassin factory. To sort of quote the movie: "the society was rumored to be so secret that no one knew it existed." So who started the rumors anyway?
These killers have their heads shaved and a huge bar code tattooed on the backs of their necks. These bar codes are VERY noticeable, but I guess in the world of HITMAN, society has decided to ignore these folks.
Olyphant plays a hitman who is sent to kill the Russian president (I think that's who he was...it's been a week since I saw it, so who remembers the plot!). And then he's asked to kill a witness. Yet it turns out that this is all a complicated double-cross that has him targeted for elimination. He investigates those who have betrayed him, and in proper hitman fashion, sets out to get his vengeance.
Meanwhile, he is stalked around the world by a man from Interpol (Dougray Scott), who seems to have a great nose for arriving where the hitman was 30 seconds ago, but never where he is NOW.
Olyphant develops an interest in the witness he nearly killed, played by recent Bond girl Olga Kurylenko (who also appears in video game inspired MAX PAYNE). And it is, oddly, this relationship that I actually enjoyed. I say "oddly" because Kurylenko is NOT a good actress. (Although if you find her attractive or sexy, you'll want to see the film for sure. She spends lot of it nude.) I simply enjoyed watching Olyphant warm up to her. He is a man without much personality, and apparently pretty much sexless as well. He kills and survives to kill again. He moves through the world without being noticed. And that's what he was bred to do. Yet this woman intrigues him, and he begins to imagine a life beyond what he has always known. And he shows glimmerings of a rudimentary conscience. By no means am I suggesting his performance (or the script) are award worthy or anything such thing. But to me, who was expecting little beyond mindless action, I was pleasantly surprised that I actually almost cared what happened to this guy.
As for the action...there is plenty. Much of it is perfunctory, and very little is original. There's a good fight scene involving short swords, but other than that, it's nothing special.
Olyphant is a decent actor (I liked him in GO, where he played a drug dealer...not so much in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD). This role at least does him no damage, because he milks all he can from it. Dougray Scott has a wonderful, rich accent. Too bad he's a feeble actor, and in this part, the script calls for him to say silly things. If HITMAN had given us a decent foil for Olyphant, it would have been even better. Instead we get a cop that we never for one second think can get the better of our hit man.
If you're looking for a mindless, violent shoot-`em-up...then this film will suit fairly well. If by my review you're thinking, "hey, I don't really like mindless shoot-`em-ups" but this sounds like something more...well...I'm sorry I left that impression. It is still mostly mindless...but just a tiny bit better than expected.
Movie Review: The Bald and the Beautiful
Summary: 3 Stars
I actually had some expectations from this movie, I'm a big fan of the lower budget and simple action flick, and the trailer actually had me very interested. Let me also say that I don't play video games and even though I'm very well read this video-game just isn't popular enough for me to know much about, unlike say earlier adaptations like doom or Mario etc, or the coming Halo.
The movie basically follows the formula take a popular video game, make it into a 100 min script, put in a decent actor, a hot exotic chick, and stuff it full of guns, explosions and a bunch of good one liners. Yet somehow this movie fell bellow my expectations, and I have a feeling the Censor Board had lot to do with, scene after scene of gratuitous violence and nudity fell pray to their hypocritical morality. So much so that even some of the dialogues that i saw in the teasers were butchered.
Despite this fact there is no doubt that the film has its weakness' such as:
1). Lack of a good villain, a staple of older movies nowadays its hard to come across a good one, a powerful hero needs a powerful hero to really shine.
2). No really big scenes.
3). Weak and much rehashed script, almost everything has been seen on film before.
4). Timothy Oliphant? While I agree he does have charisma and did carry of his role quite well there is no doubt in my mind that it could have been much better, he was good in the cool parts, but he just didn't look menacing enough when he had too.
Beside that, Olga looks smoking hot even with the punk look, when she dresses up she crosses over into the amazing territory, too bad the censor board cut of most of her hot scenes, but she was one of the best things about this movie. Some of the one liner are really good, especially good were the conversations between Olga and 47. Other than these things this movie is quite good.
Movie Review: Not bad.
Summary: 3 Stars
I liked this movie a lot. I've been ruined by the whole "all movies based off of games are bad" stigma. I played the crap out of every hitman game so I picked this up. I have to admit, even though I went into it expecting it to be terrible, it wasn't bad.
I'm no film expert but I know a few things. For example, it's impossible to appease the fans completely because this isn't a game, it's a film. If they made a _real_ hitman film, 47 would almost never talk, and there would be too little action. I understand that you can't make a film like the game because it would be asking for a commercial flop: no one outside the fanbase of the game would have a clue as to what was going and wouldn't care.
The only real problem that I have is that they didn't do the "switch clothes" thing enough. If you've ever played the game, you know that Agent 47 is a "hidden in plain sight" assassin - he gets into secure places by killing or knocking out security guards and taking their clothes. And each mission usually calls for doing this at least 3 times.
There were just so many opportunities for them to do this in the movie, but they only did it once. 47 kills a ton of people, but he doesn't hide the bodies in unique ways or take any of their stuff. It just seems so opposite from the game.
There's also a really cheesy scene where the clones have hits put out on each other and duke it out. It wouldn't be that bad, but they all slowly walk out of where they were hiding from, the entire time holding guns and swords inches from each others' face. This goes on for like 45 seconds before they finally fight. What the heck, haha.
But the ending is really action packed and the movie overall generally felt like it had effort put into it. If you like the Hitman games, you won't be disappointed, but others probably wouldn't care for it.
Movie Review: I love On Demand
Summary: 3 Stars
Usually, I know if I'm going to enjoy a movie. I am happy with 95% of the DVDs I buy. I LOVE action flicks, but something about this one said "rent, don't buy." That turned out to be a good choice. The plot is pretty basic: assassin is hired for a job then the client tries to kock him off. And don't forget a cop (here an Interpol agent) chasing the hitman. That works for me. I didn't even mind the "Dark Angel" rip-off of kids being raised as killers and branded with bar codes! Heck, I enjoyed "Doom," so I was ready to jump on board. The effects were good, there was lots of hand-to-hand combat, guns blazing and mysterious characters (I kept waiting for "cigarette man" to make an appearance). I thought Dougray Scott played the Interpol agent well, and I was actually surprised at how good the eye candy prostitute turned out to be as a character. However, I just did not like Timothy Olyphant as the Hitman. He just did not work.
In the video game, Hitman is an amoral assassin. Neither good nor evil, just doing his job never matter that it happens to be assassination. The character is dispassionate and unruffled. Olyphant came across as wooden - like he was reading his lines off a cue card even in the middle of a battle. I can't recall seeing him in anything else, so I'm not sure if he's a poor actor, or just in this role. Instead of being cool and collected, he seemed almost mentally challenged. And I don't mean that to be sarcastic or demeaning. The producers also chose to make him socially inept, which seemed out of place in a professional hitman who may have to blend in to escape or to get information. I would have preferred Karl Urban, Jason Statham, or even Vin Diesel in the main role.
Overall, this was a good but not great movie. It was worth seeing, but I wouldn't rewatch it. Rent, don't buy.