Hitman: Agent 47 asks questions as it shoots

By Katherine Monk

In the veritable blur of action-themed summer blockbusters, Hitman: Agent 47 certainly doesn’t stand out on first glance.

An adaptation of a first-person shooter videogame created by IO Interactive in the year 2000, Hitman: Agent 47 isn’t even the first Hitman in the film franchise. They made the first Hitman movie in 2007 with Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott and Olga Kurylenko—and everyone emerged unscathed, perhaps even enhanced, which explains why we’re seeing this second Hitman movie long after the console honeymoon ended.

People love the James Bond formula, and like just about every other movie that’s opened this summer, Hitman is based on two central ideas: The first is the omnipotent villain with a desire to put the noose around humanity’s neck, and the second is a particularly talented hero, who can use his or her special powers to neutralize the threat.

In the James Bond galaxy, the enhancements are the result of training, experience and an unapologetically elitist spirit that behooves his British passport. In Tom Cruise’s Impossible world, it boils down to basically the same ingredients, only with an arrogant American hanging on to airplanes instead of an uptight, and perpetually polite, spy parachuting in to save the day.

In Hitman, the villain is faceless, unfathomably wealthy and corporate, and the hero is a hired killer who is the result of genetic modification.

Created at the hands of a genetic scientist to be used as weapons, the Hitman program was eventually stopped, but not before it created an entire tribe of enhanced assassins, including Agent 47, played here by a hairless Rupert Friend.

When we first meet this bald, clean-shaven man in a perfectly tailored suit, he looks so dapper and crisp, he’s either a gay billionaire, a Russian hockey player or a bad guy plucked from The Matrix.

He’s not the kind of man you would immediately trust, which is what makes this by the book action movie more interesting than your run-of-the-mill parade of luxury goods and violence.

Agent 47 has no real feelings because they’ve been genetically excised, but he’s following Katia Van Dees (Hannah Ware), a predictably pretty young woman who suffers from strange bouts of clairvoyance – or so the special effects would make it seem.

Katia is the daughter of the geneticist responsible for the Agent program, and she hasn’t seen her pa in years, but her facial features set off the computers at Interpol (or some international police agency) and suddenly Katia is now on everyone’s radar –including that of John Smith (Zachary Quinto), an American agent trying to get to the bottom of the Hitman plot.

Because Agent 47 looks and feels like Arnold Schwarzenegger from the Terminator films, only with better diction and articulation, we understand why Katia is reluctant to trust him. We don’t even know if we like him. After all, he feels like a machine.

Yet, there is something about his Swiss-watch precision, his single-needle tailored confidence and his ability to turn power on its ear that makes him a worthy antihero, and that’s why Agent 47 is a little bit more interesting than your average action movie with a bulletproof protagonist.

The seduction is his perfection, his ability to function without the clutter of emotion; he’s tidy and effective in ways that mere mortals can only dream about. It’s why we buy magazines like Real Simple and watch Hoarders: so we can imagine, for just one moment, that we’re capable of overcoming our human flaws and messy house.

The seduction is his perfection, his ability to function without the clutter of emotion; he’s tidy and effective in ways that mere mortals can only dream about. It’s why we buy magazines like Real Simple and watch Hoarders: so we can imagine, for just one moment, that we’re capable of overcoming our human flaws and messy house.

Agent 47 is that Ubermensch, and as a result, everyone around him looks slow, lazy, petty and oddly enough, far more evil because their designs on dominance are attached to ego – which is something Agent 47 does not possess.

Casting Rupert Friend in the role was a great call from newcomer Aleksander Bach because Friend’s body language is clean and elegant, and conveys a level of privilege and education that translates as enlightened core programming.

Hannah Ware is also completely plausible as the mad scientist’s daughter with a few special talents of her own. Conveying intelligence and sexiness in equal measure, Ware has the presence of an Angelina Jolie—without the celebrity baggage.

Zachary Quinto is the last piece of the dramatic puzzle and he, too, is perfectly cast as John Smith – the would-be good-guy who presents as human and warm, but has a problem with arrogance.

As slick and polished as the Audi sedans showcased in the film, Agent 47 feels like a big ticket action movie with all the attendant bells and whistles, with just a tickle of subversion.

After all, we can’t trust anyone in this movie – not the super spy, not the American, not even the pretty girl. Everyone is a chess piece, and the only question we have to decide is whether we want side with the human player, or the computer.

@katherinemonk

THE ex-press.ca

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