Hitman (2007) by Xavier Gens. Rating:1/2 in 5

The year 2007 has been exceptionally productive, as far as films are concerned. That enabled me to have one of my longest-running orgies of sheer audio-visual pleasure, which was exhilarating and dolorously sinful, I swear. Well, friends, that uninterrupted run has come to an end, due to two of the most fiendishly abominable films ever. I am kind of very glad to tell you, one of them is an Oscar-winner. La-dee-dah! Oscar has not changed! But I will come to that Oscar-winner later. This one here is about a 2007 action thriller based on the popular computer game “Hitman”. The film, predictably, is also called “Hitman”. The film is stupid, unimaginative, routine, badly made, badly acted, and badly conceived. If the director, Xavier Gens, goes on this rate, he will be a good company for Ed Wood [unanimously tagged as “World’s worst director ever”] in hell.

This film is a publicity campaign for bald guys. It tells you how heroic, blood-thirsty and yet sexually innocent they can be; it reassures you that a girl need not fear that a bald man will “do it” to her even when she sits naked on his lap. How reassuring! If a bald man feels like suing Fox after that, I will donate to his court expenditure fund gladly! The film starts with a long sequence with a kind of mushy-mushy spiritual hymn going on at the background, where loads of very good-looking children get their heads shaved and a bar-code tattooed at the back of their head. It might remind you of ISCON, and, of course, pedophilia. A website says that this sequence is taken from the TV serial “Dark Angel”. May be, I don’t know. It is ostensibly an explanation for the shaved head of the hero [Timothy Olyphant]. What is amazing is that all those guys up there making these crap-shits can even dare to think that viewers will give a damn about their over-zealous and under-imaginative explanation for, you know what, A SHAVED HEAD WITH A BAR CODE! The hero, Agent 47, is the greatest killer on the planet. He is sexually frustrated. His educational credits are solely made of his readings of cheap magazines where they advice men on the art of seduction. I have a suspicion that you can possibly shoot him straight through his head, and he will not be killed; he cannot have got more than an ounce of brain. He makes people eat a pound of C4 and send them into offices in Africa as human bombs. Yet, he is so stupid that he forgets to cut their tongues off so that they cannot tell on him! And, the Human Bombs, very conveniently, forgets to take an enema or a stomach pump! He can walk barefoot, and when he steals from a showroom, people fail to see him. Blah, blah, yeah, yeah. And, this was very interesting, he is a member of a group of similar “Hitman”s [all with shaved heads] who do not fight between each other with automatics, but short samurai swords. That is supposedly quite honorable. There is a fight sequence in the film where 5 or 6 Hitmans fight with each other; it is the dumbest action sequence I have ever seen. The scriptwriters who came with this idea should be awarded the Darwin Award for endearing stupidity. Unfortunately for us, the prize is only posthumous. Then there is this arch-nemesis of our hero [Dougray Scott], an Interpol agent, who relentlessly shadows him. Unfortunately, instead of playing “Cops and Robbers”, they really play “Who’s the Dumbest?” between themselves. And, aha, there is a woman [Olga Kurylenko], because otherwise there would not have been a woman. She displays her gorgeous body almost all the time; seem to have an allergy towards clothing; and her only wish, dream, desire, ambition and whatever-else such woman may foster, is to get fucked by the hero sore. Fine. I love sex scenes. But can you imagine what happened next? Seconds before consummating his first “you-know-what”, the hero injects the girl unconscious. Still fine. I like homosexuals too. But no, this guy is not attracted to a hunk, a horse, a dog, or even a lamp-post! Throughout the film, I was shouting at the screen: GIVE ME ONE INTERESTING FRAME AND I WILL FORGIVE YOU! They did not give me the chance. This film is far worse than a video game.

Salvador Dali once said “the guy who first said “your cheeks are like a rose” was surely a poet. The guy who repeated it was the sorriest ass ever seen talking.” Our world of film is unfortunately filled with such sorry asses, like all the people involved with this film (which includes Luc Besson). They have the habits of last-minute students who memorize essays from last-minute suggestion books. This film is like that half-burnt chocolate cake made by a fourteen-year old, who happened to have discovered the cookbook for the first time. It is even worse, it even lacks the enthusiasm. If one collects the cans of its rolls and dumps them at the Mariana trench, he/she will be doing an act of proper charity.

Some may say that it is a futile wish to find a mainstream action movie to be good cinematically. I absolutely disagree with that. Structurally, this genre has given us brilliant attempts [Bourne films, Blade Runner]. Some of them have been applauded by everyone [La Femme Nikita, Leon], some of them had a quirky intelligence and humor to them [The Last Action Hero]. All it needs are understanding, intelligence, and sincerity. But Hollywood never believed much in those. Some say that Fox has interfered with the shooting of this film, and toned down the violence. I don’t think violence can help this movie. Even with a lot of violence, this movie would have been the zilch it already is. This will prove to be a disappointment for the gamers as well, as it completely lacks the edge and movement of the game.

This is an abominable film. I give it a ½ out of pity that verges on self-disgust for watching this.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI