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Worst…Gaming Movie…EVER!

Worst…Gaming Movie…EVER!

My god, everyone. I think we are approaching crappiness Nirvana here. When Pixels came out, I could not imagine a worse video game movie. It was patronizing, childish, and just the absolute worst thing I have seen in theaters. But Pixels was bad because it actively made fun of its fans.

Hitman: Agent 47 is bad for an entirely different reason.

Scoring a miserable 8% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, up from its record low 4%, this Hitman adaptation was billed as being absolutely faithful to the games. Agent 47 wouldn’t do anything that he didn’t do in the games, which should be a good thing… right? But now think for a minute, what does Agent 47 do in the games? Doesn’t he just kill people? Hitman games aren’t exactly known for their blockbuster plots.

And this is, in fact, translated over into the movie, in that the only thing Agent 47 really does is kill people. Or at least, he tries to. You may be thinking “wouldn’t that get old very quick?” It would, so Agent 47 is put up against someone who is basically unkillable. Played by Zachary Quinto, this character has subdermal body armor. Basically it means he is bullet-proof and knife-proof.

Yes, it’s that stupid.

So the only thing the movie is, is back to back scenes of Agent 47 trying, and failing, to kill this one person. He succeeds in killing a whole bunch of lesser characters that aren’t really important, but that’s not what people want to see.

Worst…Gaming Movie…EVER!

This is where the movie fails spectacularly. It’s very obviously action porn, and there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. Mad Max: Fury Road was action porn, and it was phenomenal. But remember how I said Mad Max doesn’t treat its audience like idiots? Agent 47 treats its audience like people who are barely paying attention.

Not only is there almost no plot in the movie to speak of, but nearly everything is handwaved away with video game logic. Characters live or die for no reason. One character treats lung cancer with an asthma inhaler. There’s a scantily-clad woman that is supposed to act as Agent 47’s love interest, but no scenes show any chemistry between them, and even though the movie is rated R there’s no sex, no romance, nothing to even hint at a serious plot other than, “that’s the woman that needs to be saved.”

In a way, Agent 47 is far too much like a video game. The scenes progress like levels, with inexplicable task being replaced with inexplicable task. Everything is in service to the fight scenes, and in a game that would work. The plot is filled in by character interaction. Your actions as the player tell the story. But in a movie, we have to actually be shown this plot, and we aren’t… not even a little.

In short, Hitman: Agent 47 is a Let’s Play with better graphics and no commentary, and that’s not as much  fun as you might think.

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