Hitman2007Eng Unrated Edition

Going into the adaptation of the Hit-man video game series, I was very doubtful of the quality of the movie I was going to see. Video game adaptations don't have a very good history, and are almost always destined to fail except in some rare cases like the Resident Evil series. Hit-man is one of those rare cases. The film kept me entertained from beginning to end and left me wanting more. While it certainly isn't perfect, it isn't a bad idea to see this movie to see how a video game adaptation should be done.

The film has a great mixture of plot and action. The plot is intriguing and interesting, and the action is awesome and has some very nice fight scenes, some of the best I've seen in awhile. The film does take itself pretty seriously, which at some times can be good and at others can be bad. There's the occasional joke cracked here and there, like the two gamers who are playing Hit-man: Blood Money when Agent 47 crashes into the room (which is also a great nod to the game), and Nika adding a bit of humor in here and there, but it mostly remains serious. Like the games, it takes itself pretty seriously in some parts and just gets ridiculous in others. This can amount to both good and bad things. At some parts it is just too serious for what is going on, refusing to have a little fun with it. And in others, it just goes a little over the top, but it doesn't really matter, as that just adds on to the fun. For the most part, the mixture of fun and serious scenes works out rather well.

The actors do a very nice job in portraying their characters. Timothy Olyphant is surprisingly very good in the role of Hit-man. I didn't think he would amount to much as he just isn't the type of actor I would expect to portray Agent 47. But he portrayed the character with a good amount of skill, as if he had already done it before. There is one problem with him. If you have seen his other movies (which consist of movies such as Live Free or Die Hard and Scream 2), you might have noticed that he shows a lot of emotion in his acting. Not necessarily intentionally, but his face just shows a lot of expressions. Agent 47 isn't really supposed to show much emotion. He does an adequate job in holding it back, but sometimes it just really shows. Now, this isn't really a problem to the ordinary moviegoer, but this might irritate a fan of the game. Olga Kurylenko, who plays Nika, does a nice job, especially for one of her very first projects and her being a foreigner having to speak English, which is probably her second language. It will be interesting to see her future in the business. Dougray Scott's performance is pretty good, and he portrays a pretty interesting character. Everyone else does an adequate job in playing his or her characters.

Overall, Hit-man, while flawed in some parts is the right way to do a video game adaptation, and should please fans of the series as well as people who have never heard of it.