Hitman: Agent 47

Remorseless, emotionless, heartless, soulless, fearless, etc. etc. etc. assassins! Killing machines made by crazy scientists who want to push the limits of manipulation. Does that sound familiar? Well, Universal Soldier, Bourne etc. in a long list of movies that have used this template to render their protagonists invincible; just a notch below making a Superhero film. Perhaps the real original in this genre is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  You are told right at the beginning of the Agent 47 about a military program which wanted to make ultra-efficient killing machines who have no trace of emotion. Yawn…you begin to think because you know exactly where such films head. But, every now and then films do come along which make us believe that a director and an editor put together can rescue a yawn-inducing premise. Agent 47 falls into that category.

Because it is adapted from a video game, the action is relentless and the settings have a sleek and surreal feeling to them at many times, as if you are in an imaginary digital world rather than the real one. The storyline is not much of a surprise here because we almost know beforehand how things are going to pan out. The only major surprise comes somewhere in the first half hour where we have a brief passage wondering who is really the good guy. Once that is sorted out we have a long stretch of action sequences interspersed with a few quiet moments. Shooters pop out of all corners, the antagonists seem to be all powerful lords and they can go to any end to get what they want, except they do not fully know what they are after.

Agent 47 remains true to its inspiration. It maintains that video game feel of continuous action, non-stop shooting and swanky sets. There is almost zero novelty per se in the actual plot and the action is generic at best. Rupert Friend has to play the remorseless assassin. The only thing different from other similar characters that have been played before is that he does not have mental turmoil of scars of a violent career. He is very much the calculative agent who is out on a mission. But, there are moments where his face betrays a bit of emotion. Hannah Ware looks vulnerable but instinctive at the same time, which is what is required. Zachary Quinto looks more like a soft romantic hero rather than an engineered being who is impermeable to artillery.

All said and done, the director and editor somehow manage to make it a sequence of action set pieces that does not allow boredom to set it for any prolonged period. No surprises, nothing new, but a watchable series of fights with swanky sets and fast cars!

Watchable action set piece!

2/5