Hitman *** (2007, Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko) – Classic Movie Review 12,954

Timothy Olyphant stars as bald, barcoded elite hitman Agent 47 in the enjoyable 2007 crime thriller film Hitman. It is good disreputable fun, brainless and breathless all-action entertainment, based on a video game.

Director Xavier Gens’s slick and enjoyable 2007 crime thriller film Hitman is good disreputable fun, brainless and breathless all-action entertainment, based on a video game series by Danish game developer IO Interactive.

Timothy Olyphant stars as elite bald, barcoded hitman Agent 47, genetically-engineered to be an assassin by The Organization, caught up in a political conspiracy, and pursued by Interpol and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). Olga Kurylenko plays the mysterious Russian woman Nika Boronina, who stirs his conscience and emotions. Dougray Scott is the Interpol agent Mike Whittier giving chase, tracking Agent 47 for quite some time and eventually confronting his target.

Skip Woods’s screenplay may not be too cliched, but it runs on familiar lines and there are no real shocks or surprises, and certainly, as expected with a video game movie, no clarity about the plot. However welcome stars Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, and Olga Kurylenko work hard for the movie, with Olyphant in command, looking scary bald. And it looks quite flashy and stylish, thanks in part to Laurent Barès’s cinematography, in part to Jacques Bufnoir’s production Designs, and in part to the mainly Bulgaria locations, but also with second unit filming St Petersburg, Russia;  Cape Town, South Africa; London; France, and Istanbul, Turkey.

Of course, there’s plenty of mindless violence, as expected with a video game movie, though the unrated version offers even more.

It was shot in the studio at New Boyana Film Studios, Sofia, Bulgaria.

A co-production between France, the US and the UK, it was released by 20th Century Fox in the US on November 21, 2007, followed by the UK on November 30 2007 and France on December 26 2007.

Hitman was a hit. On a $24,000,000 (estimated) budget the US and Canada gross was $39,687,694 and the worldwide gross was $101,276,318.

The release of the film was set back a few months for the re-shoots. Then Fox fired Gens and denied him final cut. Nicolas de Toth was brought in to soften the edit and cut down material.

Runtime; 1 hour and 34 minutes.

Released: November 21, 2007.

The film was followed by the reboot Hitman: Agent 47 in 2015.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,954

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com