HITMAN: 2 thumbs Up!

It was the first night of the movie HITMAN in the Philippines. I've seen it in trailers when I watched 30 days of Night and it was fairly interesting. Although, the action, blood-savvy genre movies are not my cup of tea, but the trailer was good enough to entice me to watch.

Hence my not so movie-buff-especially-on-the weekdays-boyfriend, got ecstatic and immediately made plans to watch it, which was a great surprise for me. This movie must mean something to him. And after my usual probing, I found out he played the HITMAN game on PC in his younger years. Ever since then he just became a fan and wished that someday, someone would think of making a movie version of it.
Amidst the movie rosters in Greenbelt, Hitman shows alongside Beowulf and Disney's Enchanted...I think it is the only movie close to reality.


The showing is at 8:55 and we went 15 minutes prior the start and surprisingly we saw couples everywhere. We hardly see any groups. They were all couples. Interesting I'd say. I think most of the ladies there wer clueless to what they were about to watch, just like me.

So We sat, drank my coffee and silently prayed it's not a wham bang action movie that blood already overclouds the story, making people more jaded, trigger happy and cranky for a money ill-spent.

The opening credits I would have to say are swift, clean and unpretentious. There's not much cinematic acts here. As shots of young boys in the facility are being shown, bald, tattooed and being trained massively, as the sound goes classical. It tells the main character's history in brief, and it sets the sad, emotionless mood of the movie.

As the story progressed, we are faced with Ageny 47, a very powerful, handsome, intelligent and efficient assassin who just carries out day to day assignments with ease and perfection. It was implied here that by far he is the best assassin there is, tasked to kill the top people, not just people but Presidents of countries seem be to included in his assignments. As the story unfolds of a conspiracy against him, the chase continues. We are even surprised of the additional characters like inspector "T-Bag" (in prison break) plays (He plays a bad Russian by the way).

I would have to say that there are some pretty horrid scenes of killing with guns (duh). Blood splatter and brutal, emotionless killing are the theme, but it is by far already subdued compared to the real game and nature of the movie. I would say women could bear a little blood and gun here and there. It's not overly gross, but screams violence.

And of course the girl, who again somehow reigns the whole story (which Mitch disapproves), is played by Olga Kurylenko as Nika, the witty whore that Agent 47 have come to protect in the end. As always, it is all about the girl. (But of course! We add spice to any story! too much gun shots, masculinity and asses are bad for this world, show a little shake, a boob, butt peek and woman sensuality, then there's balance!)

All in all the movie was a treat! It was an entertainment success. It didn't bore me one bit. The story is fast, yet easy to grip. According to the Hitman fans I've interviewed, the movie did justice to the game. It reminded them of that character they yielded in PCs.

The movie is a passable date movie, a very better choice than any other mediocre chic flicks out there. And there are funny moments in the movie too, funny in an adult context. (You'll get to see the Self Control of Code 47)! Hehe!

So in short, we enjoyed the movie! It was a worthy theater buy, and it's worth getting our asses wet as we ran to the car and driving home past 12 in the morning.

So I would definitely recommend it especially to those who are presently harboring low attention span and happen to like pure kickass entertainment.

*pix from hitman.dk