Hitman: Agent 47

Starring: Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto
Directed by: Aleksander Bach (debut)
Written by: Skip Woods (“Hitman”) and Michael Finch (“The November Man”)

Look, I don’t really know much about video games these days, but I do know that the relationship between games and films—consisting of films based on games or vice-versa—is one of missed opportunities, half-assed hack jobs, and marred by some of the worst examples of either genre. Foregoing the film-to-games side of the equation, of which the only positive example is “GoldenEye 64,” let’s turn to the list of lame to terrible movies made from video games, like “Super Mario Bros.,” “Street Fighter,” “Doom,” and, well, every single other adaptation you can think of. The latest game-to-movie adaptation to leap out of consoles and into theaters is “Hitman: Agent 47,” a second try at crafting a cinematic adventure from a pixelated bucket of generic crap like genetically-modified assassins, shadowy organizations staffed with blindly-loyal cannon fodder, and robotically-efficient hitmen differentiated with tattooed bar codes.

Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) is an emotionless killing machine, engineered from childhood to be an assassin for one of the aforementioned shadowy organization known as The Agency and to fight a different shadowy organization known as The Syndicate—and no, not the same one from “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.” 47 is sent to kill Katia (Hannah Ware), a young woman searching for a mysterious man she knows nothing about. Katia is intercepted by John Smith (Zachary Quinto), another mysterious stranger who tells her the man he is looking for is her father, and he is the man behind the Agent program that created 47 and numerous other Agents. Punch punch shoot, chase chase, helicopter explodes, maybe one cool action sequence, yawn.

In 2007, Timothy Olyphant, an actual charismatic actor, played 47 and no one cared. Desperate to try again on the franchise (for some reason) Fox originally tapped the late Paul Walker as the new 47. With the star’s tragic death in 2013, the studio decided to forge ahead anyway with whoever looked good with their head shaved and settled on “Homeland’s” Rupert Friend, who leaves no impression whatsoever, just like the rest of the movie. Quinto tries to have some fun, but the nonsensical screenplay strands him in a plot turn that gives him nothing to do but chase after Friend and Ware. Ciaran Hinds, lately of “Game of Thrones,” also shows up for a little while, but nothing means anything and as soon as the credits roll, the whole movie slips from your memory, like hitting the reset button on your video game console.