As a lifelong appreciator of both film and video games, it breaks my heart to see just how godawful the results generally are when these two mediums attempt to cross-pollinate.
I’m feeling especially gloomy this week, as Max Payne – easily one of my favorite games of all time – makes the jump to the big screen, courtesy of director John Moore. If ever there was a game that had a shot at being a halfway decent movie, Payne was it – from its visuals and storyline, both heavily indebted to the film noir tradition, to its copious John Woo-inspired gunplay and its lineup of colorful supporting characters, it had all the elements in place to be an involving and stylish shoot-‘em-up a la Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. Still, even though the film’s production designers seem to have nailed the game’s urban nightmare aesthetic and I do dig the casting of Mark Wahlberg in the title role, I can’t help but think that this regrettably PG-13-rated effort is going to be just another missed opportunity.
That will be a shame especially because cinematic video game adaptations seemed to finally be turning the corner, as evidenced by last fall’s surprisingly enjoyable action flick Hitman. Based on a series of games that invite the player to think like a well-trained international assassin and kill people in elaborate and methodical ways, the film (the English-language debut of French director Xavier Gens) instead goes the route of the typical globetrotting spy-on-the-run movie and actually ends up being more effective for doing so.
Our title character is a nameless contract killer raised in a monastery, rigorously trained in the deadly arts, and under the control of a top-secret organization called, um, The Organization, which the film informs us has ties to every government in the world. As ably portrayed by Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant, Agent 47 – yes, he’s at least got a number, if not a name – is a stone-cold, cueball-headed death dealer with a flawless record of clockwork-like kills and immaculate escapes. Unfortunately, his perfect career begins to unravel when he somehow botches the assassination of a crooked Russian presidential candidate (Ulrich Thomsen) despite the fact that, as the heroic Interpol agent (Dougray Scott) on 47’s trail insists, the guy just simply “doesn’t miss.” Turns out there’s some shady business afoot involving the Russian secret police, and before long 47 is forced to go on the lam with a spunky St. Petersburg prostitute named Nika (Olga Kurylenko) as the bad guys, the authorities, and even the un-creatively named but decidedly well-organized Organization mobilize against them.
Yes, the storyline is pretty much rote – and much of it is poorly handled, to boot – but Hitman manages to stand head and shoulders over the usual video game adaptation in that it at least feels like an actual spy thriller, rather than just a silly, aimless spew of incoherent action sequences and winking references to the games. Those action sequences, in fact, are actually quite good – Gens, clearly inspired by the work of Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Professional), does a fine job of showing off 47’s superhuman prowess in kinetic scenes that have him mowing down legions of bad guys with a gracefulness that the comparatively jumpy Jason Bourne would envy. There’s not much tension – except during a nicely done four-man, eight-blade swordfight sequence – but that’s not really the point here anyway; 47 is supposed to be the most efficient killing machine ever created, and the film gives us ample opportunity to see him doing what he does best.
What also works surprisingly well is the dynamic between 47 and Nika, which works toward fleshing out a character who, by design, has abandoned most of his more human feelings and flaws. While a guy like James Bond is apt to jump into bed with his female co-stars before the gunsmoke’s even cleared, Kurylenko (who’s also in Max Payne) spends almost the entire film throwing herself at the apparently asexual 47 to little avail – as if the desire for human contact, physical or otherwise, has been entirely eradicated by 47’s training. There are flashes of wit and humanity in they scenes they share, and these go a long way toward establishing a personality and a character arc for 47 – though, thankfully, there’s no sappy attempt to turn him into a caring individual, the downfall of many a movie about professional assassins.
Is Hitman at all faithful to the games that inspired it? Not being overly familiar with them, I can’t really say – and I can’t really say that I care. What’s important is that it works as a movie, and if all game adaptations can at least hold themselves to that easily reachable standard, this genre might someday stop giving off the whiff of suckiness that’s been attached to it for far too long.