Curiosity didn’t kill this cat

Yeah yeah, I knew it would have happened sooner or later… I ended up watching the movie.

Recently I nipped into Blockbusters where I stumbled across Hitman on the new release shelf and needless to say, it persuaded me well enough to rent it.

Unfortunately Hollywood’s dirty claws will never stop to ruin the gamers pride. Oh the tragedy! How Milla Jovovich had an awesome breakthough in one of my favourite films, “The 5th Element” and now her career dwindles along in the shame of the Resident Evil Movies. Urgh. Bad films! Bad bad bad baaaaad! I’m definitely not bothering with “Extinction” after seeing the brilliantly feared Nemesis turn into a silly softie in “Apocalypse”.

Tomb Raider… where did the gadgeteer geek come from?! I always giggle at the scene in the second film, “Cradle of Life” where Angelina Jolie punches the shark underwater. Now although the monster shark should have just ripped her apart there and then, I kinda sympathise with that scene when remembering that horror level in Tomb Raider II. How many restarts I had to go through, constantly fearing getting tailed by those treacherous sharks and desperately looking all over the place for air. I wish the pressing X would have enabled me to punch those stupid sharks in the face! What I will say for Tomb Raider is despite the troubles with the audio levels, ’cause I don’t know if it’s just me but didn’t anybody find that the sfx was louder than the dialogue?! You had to turn the volume up to hear what people were saying then suddenly BOOM! Your living room wall just got pushed further back by the real time action blaring furiously through your normal stereo speakers! The film progressed from the first to the next with entertaining stunt sequences. I think they did well to portray the acrobatic heroine.

Anyway back to the recently rented Hitman movie. I booted it up on my xbox elite, sat down with popcorn and had no high expectations for it other than it to entertain better than Eastenders/Emmerdale and whatever sodding soaps was on at the time (yes, best to believe I’m not a fan of British Soaps).

Suprisingly, I enjoyed Hitman. It didn’t blow me away but it didn’t bore me either, hmm.. it made me content. “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover”, previously from seeing early screen shots I had thought the chosen actor was wrong. However he played the character quite well and he nailed the walk of hitman. The majority of his behaviour was what I would have expected but there is a disgusting hint of cocky arrogance like Dante (Devil May Cry) in small snippets of the film.

What I had feared about was a hinted love story in Hitman which actually didn’t turn out to be. Perhaps more of a friendship but personally I don’t understand why it was there. He needed the girl to find out why his hit went all wrong, why the client who requested it was actually the target, so it’s understandable why 47 was hanging out with the lovely lady. I just can’t get my head around the ending scene. No spoilers, don’t worry! In my head, 47 doesn’t care for anyone but himself.

Snappy action and pleased to know that Hitman’s organisation as a professional killer is on good display. Asides the choppy story I did connect to the character more as the film went on. It was just how he went about things and especially how he handled this scene:

I leave you to guess what happened. In the poor world of game movies, Hitman is probably the best one of the lot. Maybe it’s not had to go through the challenge of tackling as much fantasy/fiction or the abnormal key characters that was to be encountered in Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc. So a little advantage there but overall I think the film has been well executed. For once, both genders can have a character to swoon over.

Don’t let the nightmare of game movies put you off of this one. It’s actually alright!