Title: Hitman: Agent 47
Director: Aleksander Bach
Writer: Skip Woods, Michael Finch
Stars: Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto
Release Date: In cinemas now
Review by Dave Griffiths
When the original Hitman film surfaced in 2007 it became an instant cult favorite. Gamers quickly voted it as a winner as it was a film so close to the game play and story from the video game it was based in. Yes for once a film based on a video game was being embraced by the gaming community. Surprisingly the film didn’t generate a sequel at the time, but now the studios have seen it worthy of a re-boot, a sometimes scary word but here it seems to have delivered an okay if not somewhat average film.
As a film this new re-working shares very little in common with the original. This time around we see Agent 47 played by Rupert Friend (Pride & Prejudice) and finds him pushed back into action by the Initiative trying a new tactic. Its new head, Litvenko (Ciaran Hinds – Frozen) has teamed up with a super agent named John Smith (Zachary Quinto – Star Trek) to hunt down the very innocent Katia (Hannah Ware – Cop Out) in a bid to find her father, Sanders (Dan Bakkedahl – Get Hard) who was the man who masterminded the Agent program.
Director Aleksander Bach (who is a first time feature director) actually manages to deliver a fairly decent action movie without doing anything ultra special. The film does seem formulaic at times but Bach does just enough to make the film stand out from the pack. The few special scenes were Bach really puts his personal stamp on the film and the early ‘who is evil and who is good’ play is what works and at the end of the day makes it an enjoyable experience for its audience.
Perhaps the biggest surprise with Hitman: Agent 47 is how quickly you warm to Rupert Friend in the lead role… a role that would have gone to Paul Walker if he had still been alive. As we recently discovered with The Transporter: Refueled not all change overs for roles between leading men is as seamless as the one here, but for some reason it does feel like this is a role that Rupert Friend was born to play.
If you’re a serious gamer or simply a lover of good action films then you’re going to enjoy Hitman: Agent 47 despite the fact it doesn’t deliver us anything we haven’t seen previously in the action genre.
