Hitman

*1/2 – Having watched so many of them and been almost always highly derisive of them, one would think that I would have learned by now to not bother watching movies based on video games. This one, 2007’s “Hitman”, is based on a game that unsurprisingly involves a guy going around killing people. Knowing that fact, it should be equally unsurprising to learn that this movie contains both a large amount slaughtering of people and a clear lack of story and focus, two things in which I am highly uninterested. The afore-mentioned characteristics place this one squarely in the action genre. Unfortunately, this movie’s action is about as confusing and lame as it gets. The editing and camera trickery that was used in order to try to make the fight scenes look cool backfired big time, and ended up making everything look sloppy, unrealistic and amateurish. There is a goofy romantic subplot tossed in that is borderline offensive in its portrayal of the female character as a helpless, slutty, rarely clothed whore who wants nothing more than the hero’s johnson (and, for some reason, a vineyard). The directing was a muddled mess, the cinematography was passable but without anything of distinction, and the score full of ham-fisted industrial-lite wankery. “Hitman” is unusually poor, even for the genre.