‘Hitman: Agent 47’ is dead on arrival

Rupert Friend and Hannah Ware appear in a scene from, 'Hitman: Agent 47." (Reiner Bajo/Twentieth Century Fox via AP)

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If you see one movie about governmentally modified assassins this weekend, don’t make it “Hitman: Agent 47.”

“American Ultra” is the far superior take on the unknowing super spy, because it can actually poke fun at the genre. The overly serious “Hitman: Agent 47” is so coldblooded, it’s practically reptilian.

Directed by newcomer Aleksander Bach, with a screenplay by Skip Woods and Michael Finch, the story is actually quite simple: Someone’s trying to make more of the genetically enhanced “agents,” and in order to succeed, they need to find the originator of the project, Litvenko (Ciaran Hinds), who has dropped off the face of the earth.

‘Hitman: Agent 47’

DIRECTED BY: Aleksander Bach

STARRING: Rupert Friend, Zachary Quinto, Hannah Ware and Ciaran Hinds

RATED: R

GRADE: C–

RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes

In pursuit are Agent 47 (Rupert Friend), a contract killer so focused on his job he’s practically a robot, and John Smith (a woefully miscast Zachary Quinto) who works for the private organization Syndicate International. 47 is trying to stop Syndicate from making more agents. He works for a woman, Diana (Angelababy; that is actually her name), who gives him cryptic instructions on the phone.

Caught in the middle is Litvenko’s daughter, Katia (Hannah Ware), equipped with an extra-sensory perception for lurking dangers. She falls in with Smith and 47, and after a series of rapidly switching alliances, they’re off to the races, with a quick training for her while in pursuit of her father, who abandoned her as a child.

There’s a half-baked attempt to answer some existential questions about the nature of humanity when you’re a murderous robot person, but the sentimentality doesn’t mesh with the film’s desire for cathartic, cinematic violence. Unfortunately, the action that we do get is chaotic and incomprehensible, largely bloodless, and without any sense of tension. There are times when it feels profoundly like a first-person shooter video game, which makes sense because it’s based on one.

Agent 47’s motivations aren’t clear because he’s barely a human, despite Katia’s protestations otherwise. He’s just doing his job, and ultimately the film is about work — what it means to work a job that strips one’s humanity in the service of a contract, and what it means when your life’s work results in those agents. However, the execution of that particular story just falls flat in the sanguine “Hitman: Agent 47.”