The big difference is "Hitman's" taste for larger-than-life action set pieces. It has some of Bourne's realistic close-quarter physical combat, but also (it's based on a video game) the big, slow-motion slaughter-fest - the Hitman holds two automatic weapons and shoots cross-armed, looking grimly ahead as he sends broken glass and bodies flying, killing everyone in an arms dealer's lair except the hookers.
The movie has a split personality, aiming for hard-core action on one hand and escapist fantasy on the other. So you have the Hitman executing a Russian politician, then eluding a million KGB and Interpol agents in broad daylight at a busy train station, all while displaying his trademark bald head with tell-tale price-code tattoo on the back.
What is the Hitman's organization? It's not the Hair Club for Men. Everyone in it is bald, and when a half-dozen colleagues converge on him in St. Petersburg, it's like some Kojak tribute show gone bonkers.
Given the movie's general lack of restraint, you wonder why it's so determined to keep its main character celibate. He drags the gorgeous, eager mistress of a Russian politician from city to city, looking vaguely irritated every time she removes her top and straddles him. At one point, he even jabs her with a hypo to knock her out. Has he got something better to do?
If so, I didn't see it in the course of "Hitman."
Produced by Adrian Askerieh, Luc Besson, Chuck Gordon, Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, directed by Xavier Gens, written by Skip Woods, distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox.
