Review: Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)

The younger drifter Katia van Dees (Hannah Ware) finds herself caught in the fight between a genetically-engineered assassin known as Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) and the shadowy organization, Syndicate International, which dispatches the mysterious John Smith (Zachary Quinto) to find and defend her. As Katia finds herself paired with Smith against her will and on the run from Agent 47, she learns that her scientist father (Ciarán Hinds) may be the key to her salvation and the real target of both Syndicate International and the deadly assassin trying to kill her.

Based on the popular video game series, Hitman: Agent 47 offers little to justify its existence. Its convoluted plot launches with a prologue that overloads the audience with exposition and proceeds from there to offer up all manner of betrayals and reveals that hold no emotional relevance. There’s nothing to latch onto in Hitman: Agent 47. The characters are empty vehicles for action. This emptiness is personified by Agent 47, a man with no ethics, emotion, or love. A bone-deep lack of empathy is not a winning formula for a main character. It’s a recipe for boredom.

The other characters fare no better. Hannah Ware as Katia is an empty audience surrogate, leading the viewer through action scenes and padding out the downtime with emotional revelations. When she’s inevitably reunited with her father, the film reaches for emotional relevance but there’s nothing for Ware (or the audience) to connect to. Quinto’s Smith is a deliberate cipher, fulfilling whatever role the filmmakers deem necessary to propel forward the plot. To his credit, he at least tries to the tap into the film’s inherent camp nature.

Hitman: Agent 47’s saving grace should be the action, but even here there’s no evidence of imagination. One action scene involving grappling hooks in a busy intersection reaches for visual interest, but it devolves into a repetitive shootout. Even the presence of David Leitch and Chad Stahelski (co-directors of the superb John Wick) as action unit directors cannot enliven the proceedings. The film is overly reliant on computer animation and, thus, stunt pros like Leitch and Stahelski are given little to play with.

There is no action scene inventive enough in Hitman: Agent 47 to make up for the drudgery of its narrative machinations. It’s like watching a video game without access to the controller.

2 out of 10

Hitman: Agent 47 (2015, USA)

Directed by Aleksander Bach; written by Michael Finch and Skip Woods, based on a story by Skip Woods, based on the video game; starring Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Ciarán Hinds, Thomas Kretschmann, Angelababy.

This article was originally published on the now-defunct Toronto Film Scene.