An optimist might hope that Hitman breaks the trend of abysmal Hollywood adaptations of games. Thankfully, I’m not an optimist, or I’d have been crushed by the disappointment.

A good action film can get away with being mindless. Hitman, however, makes a half-hearted attempt at being deep and misses the mark. It tries to comment upon the nature of killing...and falls short. It tries to put a lense on dehumanization...and falls short.

The basic setup is simple enough. Agent 47, the enigmatic central character (and a minor icon of the gaming world) is introduced as an elite member of a secret order of assassins. During a hit in Russia, he finds that he’s been double crossed (somehow, assassinating the leader of a major nation goes awry). Caught in a web of political intrigue, Agent 47 shoots and slices his way to vengeance, whilst being chased by his fellow assassins and an excessively determined Interpol agent (who serves little purpose other than talking about how great 47 is and serving as a plot device in the finale). That’s essentially the whole story. Save your ticket money for something a bit more amusing.

The core characters of Hitman don’t seem to work on basic human logic. The romantic subplot of the film can be described as asinine at best. Agent 47 finds himself drawn to a potential witness of the failed hit. His love interest is a prostitute who he threatens to kill, puts in the trunk of a car, kills several people in front of, and insults every other moment. She becomes attracted to 47 for inexplicable reasons that must make sense to drunken scriptwriters on a deadline. When she makes an advance on the resistant agent in their hotel room, he injects her with a substance that knocks her out. Who said chivalry was dead?

Then there’s the acting. Most of the performances are decent, but it would be a compliment to call Timothy Olyphant’s performance as 47 wooden. While he certainly has the look, he botches the lines he delivers more often than not.

I must credit the film with the occasional flashes of inspiration. The assassinations (which are too few given the source material) are fascinating to watch unfold. It’s satisfying to see Agent 47’s extensive planning and oracle-like foresight carry him to easy victory. The rest of the action is fairly standard, so the movie is amusing enough if one can drone out the bad dialogue and storytelling and focus on the bullets.