Dumb on DVD - Hitman

This week on DVD, it’s another video game movie that reminds you your time was better spent playing the video game because, by comparison, it kills less brain cells and doesn’t make you wish God had not given some of us eyes.

The big screen remake of “Hitman,” based on the popular video game about a (you guessed it, there’s no fooling you smarty pants) hitman, comes to DVD this week.

It stars Timothy Oliphant as the bald Agent 47 raised from birth to be a hitman by a secret organization who embarks on a journey to find out why a Russian presidential nominee hired someone to have himself offed. Maybe it was so he wouldn’t have to be in this horrid movie.

You know it’s bad because it’s a video game movie. Now I’m the type of person to simply judge a movie by its box cover. I’ll give anything a chance (except horse porn). But considering that not one good video game has been produced since “Super Mario Brothers” became a big screen movie, the odds are not in its favor. In fact, the odds are better that you’ll a Super Bowl ring in your Corn Pops tomorrow morning.

Boston Globe critic Ty Burr gives this film the same benefit of the doubt, but eventually admits that it “may be the first one that actually feels like a computer wrote and directed it.” I’m sure that’s not really true. Any computer that would try writing a film like this would self-destruct by the third act.

Leave a Comment