I feel like "Hitman" was too strong of a word for what our bald headed protagonist did, sure he went around killing people, but so does James Bond. Hitman is also too weak a word to really embody who he was as a person. I think a more suitable title for this film would be: Protector: I'll Kill Those Who Wish You Harm, or Emotionless: Does Not Compute.
Moving on.
The actual storyline once you get past the action was confusing at best and ridiculously far fetched at worst. The Syndicate, to no avail, have been trying to recreate the work of geneticist Peter Litvenko who is responsible for successfully genetically modifying humans to be the perfect killers. Suddenly realising that his research was going to be used for evil, you know, as opposed to good, he went under the radar and has not been seen since. Given up on tracking him down, the Syndicate change tactics on discovering that he had a daughter, who they automatically assume must hold the answers to her fathers whereabouts.
Sadly, Katia van Dees (Hannah Ware) is nothing short of a crazy person. Having dedicated her life to finding the man she believes is her father with barely anything to go on she has come up short. What she does know is the future. For reasons that make no sense even when explained she can see just far enough into the future to know when danger will be coming. Enter Agent 47 who is tasked by his handler at the International Contracts Agency to stop the Syndicate getting their hands on the information to Litvenko's whereabouts, by any means necessary (but as a contract killer, surely there is only one means deemed necessary?)
Plot aside, the film as a whole was just very.... messy. What I really want to know is why genetic manipulation on the basis that you are completely emotionless, gives you the power to see the future? I understand intuition but some of the shit in this film is just straight up hands down silly. So silly that they couldn't explain the reasoning for their own imagination and so they just glazed over it and hoped that nobody would notice it. News Flash: We Did.
There were a number of awkward moments when Katia would say something that was clearly meant to be funny and yet the entire cinema remained judgementally silent, the only noise from the audience was the ruffled sounds of comfortableness that filled the intended for laughter pause on the big screen.
I would say that if nothing else, after the laziness of the plot, the mockery of the casting and the realms of believability being so far stretched beyond it's own story world - Rupert Friend did a superb job of the virtually (see what I did there? It's because it's based on a video game) unstoppable Agent 47. He pulled off a look that was both cute and creepy; a looking that many a sex offender still can't embody.
It is for my Friend that I award this film one unicorn, it was a shame that it wasn't a bigger hit man. Sadly, no matter how much I want to pull this film up by even half a unicorn, they are sacred beasts that shouldn't be wasted on films that didn't put in the time or effort to produce something even half decent.
