We're off to a bad start when the opening scene prints "London – England" over a suburb that couldn't look more American if it tried. It doesn't get much better from there. The whole film feels like a poorly sequenced string of poorly set up vignettes, that try to pick up some elements from the game it's based on, without really bothering to have it all make sense. The plot holes are a dime a dozen, with the final scene closing off the movie with another huge and completely unnecessary one. Also, it's got some of the worst expositional dialogue I've seen in a long time, especially in the scenes with Interpol's investigator, which is an unbearably smug, annoying character in the first place.

There are also multiple scenes of tactically very stupid behaviour by 47. As someone who enjoyed playing the Hitman games, which really drill the super-cautious behaviour into you, this clash with how perfect we're told 47 is at his job really bothered me. There are a few fight scenes, too, but the movie is just about young enough for it to have the editing style that makes it impossible to tell if the choreography is any good – or, interchangably, what's going on. It's just a lot of whooshy blurred camera shakes and quick cuts, assumingly to hide the fact that the fighting wasn't convincing. And just another indication of how low the production values on Hitman are. One more being how much furniture is mysteriously shared between the offices of Interpol and the FSB.

It's not all bad on the production front. The film has some great cinematography and lighting. If you can ignore the nonsense narrative, a lot of it is really quite pretty to look at. Also, the soundtrack is pretty decent, although I can't for the life of me figure out why they didn't use (or adapt, by all accounts) the original Hitman theme by Jesper Kyd, which is one of the most iconic and memorable video game themes of all time. The actors are also doing the best they can with the script that they were given. It only really falls apart badly in the tacked-on romance subplot which, this being a Hollywood production, I assume they were contractually unable to do without, but [spoiler]at least they didn't go all too far with it[/spoiler]. I was also surprised that in a U.S. production, the writers were bold enough to be so openly critical of U.S. intelligence agencies.

I did like the [spoiler]little wink of 47 bursting in on some kids playing Hitman[/spoiler]. And, as a fan of old PC games, it was an excellent surprise to see Christian Erickson – a.k.a. Lance Boyle from Megarace – in a minor role. Seeing him in a film based on a video game can't be a coincidence, so I do believe some people who are actually into games were part of this production. It's just a shame that seemingly nobody who could have influenced the writing seems to have played Hitman. It was clear from the very first game that it would be a perfect fit for a movie adaptation, but sadly, this one leaves almost all of the potential unused. And the world is still waiting for the first film based on a video game that isn't terrible.

Sorry, 47. Turns out you were just a 48.