Video game movies have received a pretty bad rap over the years and even with all of the guns, action and spectacle surrounding "Hitman: Agent 47," it still couldn't live up to the hype. With a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 7 percent, this movie ranks as one of the lowest-rated video game movies of all time.
The original "Hitman" movie was released in 2007 and was poorly received, but it was a financial success, which prompted Fox to make a sequel. Nearly a decade later after several delays and casting changes, the sequel finally arrived, but it's not the type of movie that's going to revive an already lackluster franchise.
To be fair, it does have a pretty impressive premise. Agent 47 (Robert Friend) plays a genetically engineered assassin who is teaming up with Katia (Hannah Wares), to help her find her father, the scientist who created Agent 47.
The villain of the movie and member of the CIA, John Smith (Zachary Quinto), tries to find the two agents in a Singapore terrorist subplot.
Although this is very typical of many spy movies, the premise itself is good enough to make for a decent 86-minute movie. The film was filled with over-the-top action sequences that looked pretty on the screen, but they had no relevance to the plot.
The over-exaggerated action in the movie reminisces a 1980s action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis. In fact, if you were to walk into a movie theater not knowing what movie it was, you might be able to mistake it for a Terminator movie.
The vivid scenery was a standout of the movie. It was shot on location in Berlin and Singapore, and some of the best bits in the movie are simply the views of the city. That’s not to say the acting was terrible. It was mediocre at best, but perhaps the endless action in the film was a distraction from the characters.
Quinto’s performance as CIA agent John Smith was a standout in the movie. Quinto has truly mastered the art of playing a villain onscreen, playing the antagonist previously in "Heroes" and "American Horror Story."
The actor really seemed to put his all into the role, but the same cannot be said about all of the actors. Robert Friend’s portrayal of Agent 47 was rather dull.
The cast of Hitman #Agent47 took center stage at the Berlin premiere. pic.twitter.com/6YXx4bHrLC
— Hitman: Agent 47 (@HitmanAgent47) August 19, 2015
This is not a knock at Friend who is a fine actor, but rather the fact that the character was written to be emotionless. The lack of emotion made it hard to connect with the character.
"Hitman: Agent 47" relied too heavily on Friend and Quinto to reboot this franchise, but it just fell short in the end. Once you get past the mind-blowing action and look at the plot, it becomes a generic spy movie that’s been seen a dozen times before.
With the highly anticipated 007 movie coming out this fall, "Hitman: Agent 47" will be surely be forgotten. Once again, things are not looking too good for the reputation of video games based movies.
Reach the reporter at obie.dieke@asu.edu or follow @20crowndancer14 on Twitter.
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