Hitman

It's Olga Kurylenko week here at Go-Go-Rama, and since she's only made three English-language films (her European stuff doesn't seem to be available on DVD) the week will be rather short. Her first U.S. film, the one that brought her to the attention of Mr. Skin subscribers, was Hitman.

There's no surer way of identifying a film as awful than it being based on a video game. Therefore I was surprised that not only did I find Hitman tolerable, I actually enjoyed some of it. Now, the more I think about it the more silly it seems, but it surpassed my expectations. It also passed a certain test of mine--I didn't check to see how much time had elapsed on the DVD until it was more than half over.

Timothy Olyphant plays the title character, who has no name, just a number (47). He was raised as an orphan in some sort of training school for assassins. They even tattooed a bar code on the back of his head. If this seems a rip-off of the TV series Dark Angel, well, some of this footage was actually from that series. My question is: if your one identifying physical characteristic is a bar code tattoo, why would you keep your head shaved so you can instantly be spotted? Or is this the assassin squad from the Hair Club for Men?

Of course 47 is the world's greatest assassin. He's being tracked by an intrepid Interpol agent (Dougray Scott) who likens him to a "ghost." This is also a term used to describe Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, but comparing the two films in any way is not going to do Hitman any favors. Any way, 47 assassinates who he thinks is the Russian president, but he gets double-crossed and goes rogue, teaming up with Miss Kurylenko, who is something of a slave to the bad Russians.

I found the action in this film fun. There was even a Mexican stand-off involving not three but four men. Of course, I wasn't sure who they all were or what their motives were, which is a problem. But for mindless entertainment it served its purpose. I also thought the film had a very interesting change from most films like it: 47 was completely uninterested in sex. Kurylenko throws herself at him, with minimal clothing, but he is not interested. It makes sense--the perfect agent would be a eunuch, so as not to be distracted by sex. It was an interesting choice and not the typical one.