My ongoing quest to watch every terrible video game movie adaptation continues with Hitman: Agent 47. This one makes me sad in a way that the bad movies like all the fighting game ones don't, because I actually really like Hitman as a game. It has interesting stages and is essentially a puzzle game, something that really pleasantly surprised me when I tried the demo once, and continued to please me through all of the latest reboot series.

This movie demonstrated right off the bat, however, that it didn't understand what Hitman is actually about, and instead chose to emphasize the worst elements (the boring "origin story" stuff) and the not-actually-in-the-game elements (big generic action shootouts). I am obviously perfectly fine with big generic action shootouts, I watch plenty of movies that contain them, but a spy movie (which is essentially what this is) doesn't need to be that and could be so much more.

The worst aspect for me is giving the Agent(s) functionally supernatural powers. I am totally onboard with Agent 47 being so skilled at subterfuge, deception, and misdirection that it could be described as almost supernatural; I am much, much less on board with "well they actually just have magical psychic powers actually." It's just so much less cool! I wish that the movie was about hiding, infiltrating, and disguising, but it's really just about Shooting Guys in the Face (but not in a cool John Wick way) and going about the most generic possible plot that could ever be created for such a movie.

And that generic story is not very good, and the action is not particularly good, and the dialogue and acting are not very good. This is why I appreciate game-movie adapters like Takashi Miike so much more than the average Hollywood attempt; he Gets that he should exaggerate the unique elements of the material rather than try to conform the material to the standards of a generic trope film. He would never have allowed this.

Score: 3/10

IMDb: Hitman: Agent 47

PS: I understand Agent 47 is emotionless, but the game version has a really dry sense of humor, and this guy was totally humorless instead. It is not an insubstantial loss.

PPS: I wonder if Agent 47 being the "good guy" was supposed to be a plot twist? Even if you've never played the games, he is the guy who is on the cover. They seemed to really try to make this seem like a surprise for the first 25 minutes but obviously it just did not work for me.