At best this is an average assassin action movie, at worst it’s derivative tripe, but it manages to hold its head above water just enough to entertain for 90 minutes.
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Hitman
I haven’t played the game on which this movie is based (Hitman!) but I have heard horror stories about how amoral it is and hence bad for society. The game, I’m led to believe, covers the actions of Agent 47 (the hitman in question) born into the role and carrying out hits for cash. The movie of the same name is an action film which adds some plot and dilema. It is, as most movies about assassins turn out to be, a story of assassins finally realising what they’re doing isn’t really actually nice, but feeling their only recourse is to kill their way out of the problem and in that respect doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. However there’s still scope within that basic premise to deliver something interesting or entertaining. How many times have we watched the same spy story (spy is abandoned by his agency when they think he’s gone bad and fights to prove himself to be innocent) or the same cop buddy story?
Our hero takes on a job and is subsequently set up, the rest of the film covers his actions to exact revenge, understand what happened, and rescue the girl (there’s always a girl). Playing foil to the assassin is an InterPol inspector who’s been tracking him for three years. The short interplay between these two characters does add some depth, and while the female involvement is predictable and insulting (oh no, another woman needs saving from an abusive and sadistic world leader) it provides the only shallow-comic moments in the entire film.
The action sequences are pretty staid, and acting is pretty hollow, although how much range do you need to play a deadly assassin? The camera work and scenery is pretty nice though. What saves the movie from being a total dud is that it’s actually quite interesting. I wanted to see where it went, mostly because of how the movie opens (I won’t spoil it), and that kept me going until the end, and while I saw the little twist coming it still made me grin.
There are some interesting edits, and I’m assuming quite a bit of footage ended up on the floor, we move quickly from one a scene at one point to a meeting with a CIA agent which doesn’t seem to have any back story at all, but when you’re expecting something to be terrible, it’s easier to be forgiving about stuff like that.
Hitman is a passable action movie, and while it’s essentially derivative tripe, it’s derivative tripe which entertains and keeps you amused for 90 minutes. It scores just over 6 on IMDB, and I’d probably rate it around 5, not terrible, not good, just ok.
There is one thing I have to rant about though. Have you seen the game or the trailers for the movie? The hitmen belong to a secret organisation, totally clandestine. So they ensure their hitmen blend in, by making them all totally bald and tattooing barcodes on the back of their heads about a fucking inch high. Our assassin is a ghost, blending in everywhere, except everywhere he goes he stands out like a thug in a china store because he’s bald and has a bar code tattooed into his head. Come on! I can suspend disbelief but when no one raises an eyebrow, and when no one knows what any of these assassins looks like, I just had to pretend it was a dream.
Otherwise – worth watching for fans of the game and people who like action movies for what they are.
I let a man touch my testicles
I thought a lot about writing this blog post, and in fact as I write it (now! live!) I’m still not sure I’m actually going to post it. I don’t really know who reads my blog any more, I’m not even sure why those who do, do, but I suspect this post isn’t what any of you are expecting.
Don’t click or read on if you’re squeamish or don’t feel you know me well enough to listen to me talk about my bollocks being handled by a strange guy.
More snow
And this time, Grete made a snowman.
Bus slogans
Hot on the heels of the atheist bus advert some awesome soul has created this. You can create your own bus slogans, as many as you like, hours of fun!
I’ll put some pictures up later.
Facebook privacy
Excellent article here about managing your privacy settings on Facebook. Make sure you know who can and can’t read your information and profile, keeping yourself in or out of search engines and a bunch more.
Well worth a read!
Superbad – what did I miss?
We recorded Superbad over Christmas and watched (the start of) it this evening. Maybe myself and Grete weren’t in the right mood but it really didn’t strike a chord. I chuckled a couple of times, but I hated Seth and the other two kids were equally annoying. We made it to the part where the liquor store gets robbed but then just gave up. Perhaps it turns a corner at that stage and gets super funny, perhaps not.
Won’t be rushing to try and catch it again any time soon – deleted it from Sky+, dissapointed and left wondering what we missed.
I won’t call this a full review since we didn’t finish watching it – and that’s something that hasn’t happened in a while.
Stripes – Special Edition
We watched Stripes at the weekend, one of the cheap DVD’s we bought recently. Sure I’ve seen it before, but it’s a classic and I wanted my own copy. While the box just says Stripes, the DVD itself has Stripes Special Edition printed on it, and sure enough, it’s got some stuff I’ve never seen before.
Since I haven’t seen this in the cinema, I can’t really tell if the extra stuff is what they normally cut from the TV version or if it was stuff that really never made it into the theatrical release. Either way, it was interesting, but didn’t really add a whole lot to the movie.
This is a classic Bill Murray / Harold Ramis / Ivan Reitman film, detailing the story of a pair of near-dropouts who join the army. Hilarity ensues as they stumble their way through basic training, form tight bonds with thier fellow servicemen and become deep friends of their drill sergeant (kind of). It’s really a film of two halves, once they complete their basic training the film turns into a kind of spies-like-us pre-cursor and our heroes need to head into enemy territory to save their comrades.
It’s enjoyable, although I think it has lost its edge a little over time. Worth owning on DVD, worth seeing if you’ve never seen it before, and definately worth seeing if you wonder where the Police Acadamy series of films drew their inspiration.
25 things about me (meme!)
As seen here and Facebook (which I can’t link to because you’re probably not friends with my friends, and if you are, you already saw their stuff). On Facebook you’re supposed to tag 25 people, and they’re supposed to then do their 25 things thing. Maybe I’ll post this on Facebook as well, who knows.
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- I’m type two diabetic, through a mixture of genetics and too much pizza, your guess as to which has the greater effect is about as accurate as modern science’s best guess as well. I was diagnosed in 2005.
- During university (or as it was when I started, polytechnic) in Sheffield, I would sometimes drink 7-12 cans of regular ice cold coca cola a day. This in no way contributed to #1 above, really, no link at all. During periods of revision or ‘last minute finalisation of essays’ (i.e. writing 3000 words from scratch in 2 hours), cola consumption could exceed this limit.
- John Hughes, John Landis, Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis basically formed my entire view of the universe. Later in life, Kevin Smith simply confirmed it all to be true.
- I prefer savoury tastes to sweet tastes. This isn’t to say I don’t like sweet stuff, but on the whole I enjoy savoury tastes more. Despite the claims of the first GP I spoke to after being diagnosed as diabetic, my diet does not contain a lot of sugar, it consists mostly of savoury, sour, and umami tasting foods. I stopped taking sugar in my tea in my early teens, and while I enjoyed jellies I always prefered the sour ones (clearly off limits now thanks to #1). Note to America: By jellies, I don’t mean jams, I mean these.
- Clearly I enjoy food (as evidenced by my weight and #1), I most enjoy food which has a strong taste and I often find myself craving chilli based foods. I am not afraid of some heat in a food product, but I prefer there to be a strong flavour to match it. If I’m making home made chilli it’s not usually hot in a chilli sense, but it is often salty and has a very strong spice flavour.
- I spent several years at university associating strongly with Garfield for various reasons, but not least because he liked lasagne.
- I have absolutely no idea what blood type I am.
- I firmly believe that a technical skill is less important than the ability to understand problems and apply related knowledge. If you have the ability to look at something, understand it, and apply related knowledge you can learn any technical skill worth knowing.
- I can’t sing, I can’t write music, I can’t play back music that I hear on a musical instrument even if I know technically how to play that instrument (keyboard and tenor horn as a child), I can’t dance, but I have exceptional rhythm and can hold a beat like the universe depended on it.
- I believe the phrase “sarcasm is the lowest form of wit” is actually irony.
- I could stand in front of 1000 people and talk about a topic I picked up 2 days ago and sound confident but I couldn’t start a face to face conversation with any one of those people about something I’ve been doing for 25 years.
- The music of my youth was Madness, Queen, Eurythmics and Adam and the Ants. I still love the first three, but I don’t rate Adam as much any more.
- During an assembly at school when I was around 10, our head teacher explained that not everyone could be good at everything. We were all different and had different strengths and skills. I decided there and then that it was clear I would never win a race around our school playground with anyone else due to my weight and lack of physical prowess, however, I would be able to beat everyone else by running diagonally across the playground since I knew that distance was shorter than the length of the other two bits of that triangle. I decided that maths would be where I excelled and was pleased with myself. Seven years later I gave up A level maths because it was too hard, and discovered I could neither win a foot race, nor beat people at maths. I resigned myself to knowing how to use an apostrophe (even if these days, lazy fingers and lazy proof reading mean I get them in the wrong place too often).
- I have never had a driving lesson and hence can’t drive.
- I used to own (when at university) a long black rain coat, which I loved dearly. I also had a pair of jeans which stopped at the knees, because they had worn out, formed holes, and the bottom sections had fallen off. When combined (coat and jeans), with the coat buttoned up, the bottom of my legs were visible but naked. I used to go out dressed like this. It scared people.
- I’m a negative person. I don’t just believe your glass is half empty, I think you’ll find it has micro-fractures and is currently leaking water. Soon it will be entirely empty and you won’t have had time to drink any of it. I don’t always think negativity is bad, if that were the case the electron would really suck. However it obviously has to be managed. I find I’m very good at spotting the flaws in solutions, designs, plans, theories and ideas. This doesn’t always sit well with the owners of those intellectual objects. It doesn’t really make them any happier to realise that I’m equally negative about my own ideas, theories, plans, designs and solutions. However, when I learn to channel this skill correctly and couch my comments in happy-talk, it usually leads to better solutions, designs, ideas, theories and plans. Usually. If you find me pissing on your bonfire too much, just remind me, and I’ll try and keep it under control.
- My bladder capacity appears to be immense. This is due to a combination of factors. A lot of cola and beer while at university, a distinct and deep hatred of shared urinals, general laziness and a propensity to end up sitting somewhere that means I have to ask people to move if I want to stand up and go to the toilet.
- I was virtually teetotal until I went to university, but it didn’t last long. The first real drink I had was Newcastle Brown Ale. It made me so ill I vowed never to drink again. Until the next evening. I didn’t really choose to be teetotal until university, I just wasn’t ‘in’ with the kind of kids at school who went out drinking and so never got invited out. I don’t necessarily regret this, I’m just letting you know. You know.
- If it hadn’t been for the debt of being at university and because I’m basically really lazy, I’d probably still be in higher education in some form or another. However, the company I worked for in my third year placement on my degree asked me to come back when my degree finished, assuming I passed, and I’m always happy to fall into the easy option.
- Despite my mother smoking all the time I lived at home, I don’t smoke. I did smoke a few cigars during one particular year (1991-1992 I seem to recall), but just stopped one day. I don’t seem to have the kind of personality that gets addicted to things.
- Although I engage heavily in several hobbies which appear initially to demand a superb imagination (roleplaying, live action roleplaying, reading, etc.), my imagination basically sucks.
- I love debate. I find discussing ideas fun. I totally respect the fact that other people believe different stuff to me, and will happily debate it until it gets dark and then light again with no intention of changing their mind, and every intention of maybe changing mine. However, because I am somewhat intense when presenting my current belief on any particular topic, most people think I’m trying to change their minds, get frustrated or angry at me and then shut up and move on.
- I am generally uncomfortable with physical contact, but try hard to ignore it. This doesn’t mean I don’t want you to hug me, I do, just that I’ll probably look uncomfortable for the first five seconds and that I probably won’t initiate the contact. I’m getting better.
- My self image is a cross between Neo (The Matrix), Clint Eastwood and Egon Spengler. The reality is clearly a cross between John Belushi, Bill Hicks and Raymond Stantz.
- Despite the fact that I don’t recall every verbalising to my mother or sister that I love them, I do in fact, love them.