Movie Review Hitman

Hitman (2007) 

Directed by Xavier Gens

Written by Skip Woods

Starring Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko 

Release Date November 20th, 2007

Published November 19th, 2007

Have you ever seen somebody who is clearly trying hard to be cool? He looks cool on the surface, but closer inspection shows the strain, the hard work that went into being cool. Hitman is a movie that is trying very hard to be cool, but the strain shows. Desperately aping the sleek style of the Matrix while trying to capture the cool of the sadly overlooked 2002 flick Equilibrium, a film of such effortless cool that even failing at the office does little to diminish it, Hitman comes of as desperate and uncool. 

Timothy Olyphant stars in Hitman as a nameless assassin who is said to be the best killer in the world. Raised in a secret society and trained in diapers to be a stone cold killer, our nameless hitman is given only a number, 47, and a barcode tattoo on the back of his head. Sent to Russia to assassinate the Russian President, a former hardliner going soft toward the west, 47 finds himself wrapped in Russian politics when the man who he knows he killed continues to make public appearances after his death.

On the assassin's trail is a hard charging Interpol agent Mike Whittier (Dougray Scott). His pursuit of the assassin is dogged and determined and yet he carries a grudging respect for the skill and efficiency of the killer. When the two catch up to one another the determined stares are nearly as lethal as the bullets.

Directed by Xavier Gens, Hitman is far from being a bad movie. Rather, Hitman is a thinly premised action flick that looks much cooler than it actually is. Highly stylized, quickly choreographed violence is nothing new and Hitman arrives looking like a poseur. We've been there since The Matrix, and we've done that a few times already this year alone, Smokin' Aces, Shoot'Em Up.

So why isn't Hitman really cool? Because it's too late. This highly stylized, high body count action movie is already becoming out of date. In fact, this action sub-genre has already been sent up and blown away in Michael Davis' Shoot'Em Up. That doesn't mean there are no more thrills to be garnered from the highly stylized action movie but that Hitman simply doesn't do enough to innovate or set itself apart from what has come before it.

Timothy Olyphant oozes charisma and machismo but I'm not sure this is the right role for him. Anyone who remembers his terrific performance in Go or his foul mouthed role on television's Deadwood will find him hard to believe as an asexual hitman monk. Co-star Dougray Scott plays the good guy better than expected in Hitman. Often typecast as a faceless baddie, Scott shows good guy range never seen before in his journeyman career.

No doubt Hitman will satisfy audiences with short attention spans. Only a moviegoer who has already forgotten the last stylized action flick they saw will truly enjoy the derivative action of Hitman. On the bright side, Hitman is the rare video game adaptation that doesn't entirely suck. Director Xavier Gens is a more than competent director. His action is solid, if unspectacular. He's far better than most directors left with the task of interpreting artless video games into movies.

Hitman is too familiar to be great and is far less cool than it wishes it were. Trying to be cool is the most uncool thing you can do. That's the unfortunate place where the makers of Hitman find themselves.

Movie Review Mission Impossible 2

Mission Impossible 2 (2000) 

Directed by John Woo

Written by Robert Towne

Starring Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames

Release Date May 24th, 2000 

Published May 20th, 2020 

The second installment of the Mission Impossible franchise is really where the series found its feet. After the first film, though financially successful, failed by forcing director Brian DePalma to make a standard, mainstream action movie, the makers of MI2 picked the right director to deliver a slick, stylish, fast paced action movie that didn’t have to do anything other than just be cool looking to succeed.

Director John Woo, the inventor of the cool style of action adventure cinema, was the perfect choice to direct Mission Impossible 2. Woo favors visual dynamism over story and that style over substance approach works for the mindless sort of fun that was missing from the first film which ached to be both taken seriously as a movie and be enjoyed as an action adventure movie, and nearly failed on both accounts.

We picked up the action of Mission Impossible 2 by introducing our ‘MacGuffin.’ For those that aren’t aware of classic movie tropes, the macguffin is a term coined by the legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock to describe a plot device that all the characters in the movie are seeking. It can be any kind of nebulous concept as long as everyone is chasing it, that’s what propels the story along. The Maltese Falcon is arguably the most famous example of a MacGuffin, a thing everyone in the movie wanted for whatever reason the plot decided.

The Macguffin in MI2 is a virus and a cure known as Chimera and Bellerophon. A doctor friend of our hero, IMF Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has created both the worst virus in history and its cure and is attempting to escape with them both as the movie opens. Unfortunately, the doctor falls into the hands of a turncoat IMF Agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), impersonating Ethan. Ambrose murders the doctor and absconds with the MacGuffin and the chase is on.

To find Ambrose, Ethan must enlist Ambrose’s former flame, a thief named Nyah (Thandie Newton). It will be her job to get back into Ambrose’s life and get Ethan and his team, including his old buddy Luther (Ving Rhames) and a newcomer Aussie pilot named Billy (Jon Polson), close enough to retrieve the virus and cure before Ambrose can sell them to the highest bidder or unleash them on the world out of spite for the IMF.

The plot of Mission Impossible 2 isn’t important, we’re here for the cinema of cool, the cinema of John Woo and the style over substance master does not disappoint. Slow-motion cameras capture spectacular chases and stylish cinematography brings out the sexy fight over the affections of Newton’s Nyah between Ethan and Ambrose. Sure, saving the world and all is important or whatever, but looking good is the point of MI2 and everyone and everything looks incredible.

Every Mission Impossible is known for the stunt that nearly got Tom Cruise crippled or killed and MI2 is no different. Our first glimpse of Ethan Hunt in MI2 is him free-climbing a craggy rock in the middle of the Utah desert with no one around for miles. Naturally, Cruise insisted on doing the stunt himself and watching him narrowly cling to the side of a nearly flat cliff face is honestly still as breathtaking today as it was in 2000 when the film was released.

Screenwriter Robert Towne, back from having over-written the first Mission Impossible film crafted the screenplay with a much leaner and clearer narrative. Towne claims that he had to fit a pair of stunts into the movie even before the plot of the film had been devised and had to write the scenes into the movie as he created the screenplay. This, naturally, includes Ethan’s introductory scene and a scene near the end involving a motorcycle fight.

The motorcycle ballet at the end of Mission Impossible 2 is wildly silly and implausible but wonderfully so. Director Woo delivers the scene in his classic, slick-slo-mo style and it works for the slick, empty spectacle of MI2. Also great is the closing fight scene between Cruise and Scott where Cruise’s lithe physicality is framed beautifully within Woo’s perfectly seamless and crisp scene-setting that, of course, includes his trademark fight-scene doves.

Tom Cruise appears a great deal more comfortable in this empty-headed sequel. The first film featured him being cocky yet calculated and when you could see Ethan’s wheels turning it often slowed the film to a halt with overwrought flashbacks and other such nonsense. Thankfully, MI2 does not burden the actor or character with too much to think about and just gets on with the business at hand, super cool fight and chase scenes.

Mission Impossible 2 is as shallow as a drying puddle but it looks and feels spectacular. It’s like a great looking car that gets no gas mileage, completely impractical for use, but it looks amazing. Every frame of Mission Impossible 2 is a gorgeous fantasy of the action spy genre. The awesome locations, the world travelogue cinematography and the spectacular action makes the movie insanely watchable if not all that rewarding for your attention-span.

Movie Review Enigma

Enigma (2001) 

Directed by Michael Apted

Written by Tom Stoppard

Starring Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows, Tom Hollander

Release Date April 19th, 2002 

Published October 8th 2002 

A little more than two years ago, the film U-571 caused a small controversy when it portrayed an American sub crew as the first Allied soldiers to capture a German code-breaking machine. It was not the Americans but rather a British sub that captured the first Enigma machine. And Enigma shows that it was the British who first cracked (and then cracked again) the German’s supposedly unbreakable codes.

At Bletchley Park, a converted British farm, a group of Britain’s top mathematicians are holed up combing through jumbled numbers and letters, attempting to uncover German troop movements. As we join the story we meet Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott), possibly Britain’s top code breaker. Jericho was the first to break Germany’s Shark code—the code used by German U-boats. Jericho is returning to Bletchley Park after recovering from a nervous breakdown that his colleagues believed was work induced; however, we come to realize that it was caused by a failed romance with a mysterious blonde named Claire (Saffron Burrows).

It is Tom’s goal to return to Bletchley Park and win Claire back, but upon his arrival, he finds Claire has gone missing and the code he had spent so much time cracking is now useless. As Tom is distracted by his search for Claire he must also deal with once again cracking this uncrackable code. In his search for Claire, Tom enlists the help of Claire’s best friend,

Hestor (Kate Winslet). Tom and Hestor quickly discover that Claire’s disappearance and Jericho’s unbreakable code may be related. Jeremy Northam plays a lawman named Wigram who suspects that one of the Bletchley Park mathematicians may be a German spy and because of Jericho’s strange behavior he is at the top of Wigram’s list.

The code breaking in the film is quite complicated, to the point of being entirely confusing to anyone not well versed in mathematics. It was so confusing that a layman would not understand it; however, to dumb it down would be a disservice to the history of Bletchley Park.  

While the difficulty of that portion of the story makes Enigma difficult to follow at times, the actors, (notably Dougray Scott) do an excellent job ofkeeping the audience engaged. The scenes involving Scott and Northam are something out of classic Hitchcock as these two intelligent men match wits searching for a missing femme fatale and a spy who may or may not be the one in the same.

Had director Michael Apted indulged more of the Hitchcockian elements of Enigma, the film may have been far more entertaining. As it is, Enigma comes off more as a scholarly historical piece and less of an entertaining mystery. Still Enigma is a well-crafted piece worth a look for. It is shining a light on history that is too often colored by Hollywood.