I wrote an awesome Hitman movie because nobody else can, apparently

I wouldn’t necessarily say I was excited about seeing Hitman: Agent 47. I wasn’t a fan of the original Timothy Olyphant movie adaptation, and the game series always seemed to aim for the basest of instincts: you play a genetically engineered assassin known only as “47,” and as such you basically, well, kill a lot of people. But I liked star Rupert Friend in the last few seasons of Homeland well enough, and with Zachary Quinto (Heroes, Star Trek) on board there seemed to be a slim possibility that this would be some sort of elevated entry into the series.

Neither that thin thread of optimism nor the Ketel and tonic I had beforehand did much to help when Hitman: Agent 47 began its bloody, unbearable, and often laughable 90-plus-minute parade of violence and direct-to-video drama. It wasn’t just that the premise was tripe — Hannah Ware plays Katia, a young woman who has been obsessively searching for a strange man that she can’t quite remember, only to discover that he is the key to a dormant genetic engineering program; with both the mysterious Syndicate International and our bald assassin 47 in the hunt for the same man, she soon gets caught in the middle — it was the execution. Halfway through, amidst a barrage of cringe-worthy dialogue, incomprehensible action set pieces, and incoherent dramatic turns, I started thinking, “Surely, somebody could have done better than this.”

And then I had the thought that every critic has had while watching a Hitman movie: “Hell, I could do better than this.”