Rupert Friend stars as Agent 47, an international hitman, identifiable only by the barcode tattoo on the back of his head that was given to him as a child. Engineered as an almost unstoppable and emotionless killing machine, Agent 47 is tasked with confronting and eliminating the leader of a syndicate that is trying to unlock the secrets behind Agent 47’s powers to harness and create a similar kind of assassin. Not exactly the Hitman some loyal fans know and love but it’s not the worst feature film on Netflix right now.

Director: Aleksander Bach
Writers: Skip Woods, Michael Finch
Starring: Rupert Friend, Zachary Quinto, Hannah Ware

Hitman: Agent 47 is a movie I’ve wanted to watch for an extremely long time but often found myself put off due to the lack of positive reviews coming away from the film when it was originally released in 2015. As a huge Hitman fan (both game franchise and the 2007 film) I was, like many, disappointed in the focus on action that this movie took. Unfortunately, this flick decides to avoid most of the things that Agent 47 is notoriously known for – primarily his art of discretion.

As a standalone action movie with a half decent premise, this wouldn’t have been a terrible film, but as a Hitman movie, this didn’t quite feel right. The overall pacing of the movie felt a little bit rushed at times too, especially at the beginning when the story wasn’t one hundred percent clear to the viewer.

Many of the scenes and assassinations were outlandish and way over the top. At times you felt like this was some kind of CGI experiment where the filmmakers were practicing their skills and seeing how far they could push the envelope. Again, not something you’d come to expect from the Hitman franchise, especially not from Agent 47. The same could be said for the music and soundtrack choice during many of the action sequences – I found myself wondering whether the filmmakers could have found something a little less generic and basic on more than one occasion.

As the movie storyline and plot developed, I found myself comparing this more and more with a Terminator movie, especially in the way Agent 47 was doing his best to protect Katia (Hannah Ware) the daughter of the man that the syndicate were trying to track down and extract information from.

Rupert Friend wasn’t exactly ground-breaking in his role but at the same time he wasn’t terrible. There’s only so much an actor can convey when playing an emotionless killer and I think Rupert Friend did a good job of doing what was tasked to him. Interestingly, Zachary Quinto also appeared in this flick as John Smith, one of the men responsible for trying to stop Agent 47. At first, I didn’t buy into Quinto’s character much at all but as the movie developed, he became much more believable and did a steady job overall.

Ultimately, Agent 47 is a deadly assassin – not an indestructible superhero that he was painted out as during this picture.

“I thought you could only be a legend after you are dead.”

Agent 47 – Hitman: Agent 47