Timothy Olyphant (the bad guy from LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD [aka the killer from SCREAM 2 {SPOILER FOR SCREAM 2}]) plays a gentleman by the name of Forty Seven, who is a super badass hitman who does nothing at all in life except kill people for a secret organization that has something to do with the church and that raises orphans to be assassins and tattoos bar codes on their heads and makes them stay bald and dress like Dick Cheney. And although the movie has some enjoyable moments I feel like a movie that’s about that should really be more enjoyable than this is. And I’m sorry to say it but I think I have to throw some of the blame at the casting of Mr. Olyphant.

He’s a pretty good actor and I usually like him, but there is a major problem here: he doesn’t look good bald. I really believe that when they had him all signed on and were excited and then started fitting him for his costume and shaved his head and looked at him they must’ve thought oh shit. What have we done? There are plenty of people who can pull off bald: Samuel Jackson, Jason Statham, Telly Savalas, Patrick Stewart, Louis Gossett Jr., Montell Williams, Isaac Hayes, Gordon from Sesame Street, etc. And then there’s everybody else. I’m not saying Olyphant looks like a freak or anything, but he doesn’t look cool, it doesn’t look natural. This is a guy who should not be bald until God or cancer tells him to. And every time he’s sneaking away from an assassination, trying not to be captured or killed by Interpol, the Russian Secret Service and everybody else in the world you keep wondering how it is that nobody can spot this weirdo with the bald head and the tattoo on the back wearing a spotless black suit with a blinding red tie. I know it’s based on a video game and that’s where they get the look from, but come on. Super Mario would have an easier time not getting spotted.

And anyway if this UPC code has to be there then why doesn’t anybody ever scan it? They need to look at his file so they scan his head. Or he is being hired for an assassination and he meets the client at Target and they use one of those price checkers to scan his head and it shows how much it will cost so he doesn’t have to say the figure out loud. I don’t know man, but if you’re gonna put something stupid like that on the main character it should be used for something at least once. For example Charles Bronson carries a harmonica in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and he plays it. He doesn’t just carry it around. I heard that in THE NUMBER 23 Jim Carrey wears a saxophone around his neck all the time and never plays it. So there is a precedent for this. The Schumacher Precedent. Is that really the standard you want to live up to, whoever-made-HITMAN?

Anyway, there is one scene where he does realize that he sticks out like a sore thumb and should wear a disguise, so he steals some kind of uniform (looks like a shriner’s outfit) but then, in the grand tradition of Lando Calrissian in disguise at Jabba the Hutt’s Palace, he takes off the hat to reveal himself to the camera. And to expose his identifying tattoo and head. You know, for a guy trained his entire life to do nothing but this, he should probaly be more competent.

And I don’t know about this character. Other than having some cool moves he’s not cool. He doesn’t fight for anything that’s right, he doesn’t seem aware that his life is a tragedy, he only makes one joke and it’s not funny, he seems to be afraid of sex, he’s weird and socially awkward but not in a funny or scary way. And Olyphant is dedicated to this portrayal but he doesn’t find a way to make you like the dude anyway.

So I’m glad the guy can pay rent but I gotta blame the casting, because maybe if it had been some Charles Bronson type charisma in there it could’ve transcended the crappiness of the movie. But you also gotta blame the filmatists. This is a movie that feels DTV from the very beginning. It does have more cool things that happen than most DTVs, but stylistically and storywise it’s a dead ringer for the Seagal spy intrigue pictures like THE FOREIGNER, SHADOW MAN and a little MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, or some of the recent Wesley Snipes pictures. It’s got the white flashes, the dreary European locations, the awkward rhythm to the editing, the busy BOURNE-ripoff score, and according to IMDb it even uses stock footage (not sure if it was fixed for the uncut DVD I saw but apparently some of the opening montage was recycled from the TV show DARK ANGEL).

The narration that explains Forty Seven’s background is pretty funny. He tells us he works for a group “so secret nobody knows it exists,” but also that it’s “known only as ‘The Organization’.” Which is it, baldy? Is it known or unknown? How bout you say “it would be known only as ‘The Organization,’ except nobody knows it exists, so it’s really not known as anything at all, and even if it was, nobody would know the right name, so even if you talked to somebody who was in The Organization they wouldn’t know what you were talking about, because it’s really not called The Organization, and even they don’t know it exists anyway, because nobody does”? Hmmm, maybe not. I’ll need to streamline that a little.

But early on there is a scene where the movie transcends mere stupid to the type of absurd that I love. Forty Seven gets surrounded by a bunch of other bald UPC heads. This would be a good time to line them all up and do inventory but instead they all point two guns at each other. When Forty Seven asks if they would like to die with dignity they agree and ritualistically pull back their guns, empty the cartridges, drop the guns, and reach to the back of their suits to pull out two full sized swords! Must’ve been uncomfortable running around with those things in there. And then there’s a big sword fight on a subway. Now we’re talking! The scene honestly did turn me around and convince me that I was watching my type of movie, but the rest of the movie did not really live up to that promise.

When it’s only interested in over-the-top action like this that’s where it manages to be better than DTV. There’s a long sequence full of homages to Olyphant’s nemesis John McClane – bare feet, swinging through a window, shooting a bunch of guys from the top of the elevator, etc. There are occasional clever ways to kill people like a guy with a bomb in his neck or some guns hidden in an ice bucket in a hotel hallway. In this cut the violence is pretty graphic, lots of blood that splatters unneccessarily far, heads that explode when shot, a digital arm-hacking, a severed ear. Also you get a few boobs. Remember those? They used to show them in movies. You’ll recognize ’em.

There’s enough to make the movie watchable but not enough to make it very memorable. There are blown opportunities. In one scene he has to flee the hotel stripped of all his trademark gear, down to his underwear, not even wearing shoes or socks. I thought aha, this is gonna be good, this is like Mel Gibson at the beginning of PAYBACK having to build himself up from nothing, pickpocketing and petty thieving to get himself an ID, a credit card, a meal, a suit, a gun. I love this type of shit.

But nope, Forty Seven just walks into a building, off camera, walks back out fully-clothed again. Never mind.

I’m not sure really what they were going for with this movie. There’s nothing wrong with a generic assassin movie, but it has to be better executed to transcend the lack of originality. And there’s nothing wrong with adding some weird touches like this whole secret backstory, but personally I thought the backstory was pretty stupid and never was explained very well or applied much to the story. It just seemed like they had to mention it because it was in the game and nerds would get mad if they didn’t.

I would say that somebody still trying to rip off John Woo movies was a nice gesture, but the doves I thought I saw in the trailer were not in the movie. So maybe I imagined that. I guess it’s nice that somebody is still trying to make a movie like this at all. At least the camera wasn’t shaking around too much. Nice try, I guess. Keep practicing.