Hitman DVD Review:

Jet Li, darling of the martial arts inspired movie genre, stars as Tai Feng, a hit man with a heart of gold. A Japanese mobster has been murdered in Hong Kong. The man who avenges the death of this giant of the organised crime circuit in Asia will receive riches beyond his dreams. Information must be gathered, the Hong Kong police must be avoided and one man who would rather buy a child a balloon at the fairground than rip a man’s heart out, must be trained by the streetwise agent Sam to become the man with the strength to see the job through to completion. The main problem with this movie is that the dialogue has been dubbed into American. A plush Hong-Kong police department full of people wearing crisp, off the peg at Armani suits, suddenly bang their hands on the table and shout in American: “What’s the point of coffee if it’s de-caff?”

At the beginning of the film, the young Mr Feng is seen arguing with a checkout assistant in a supermarket over the five dollars worth of change he has been denied. The checkout assistant eventually hands Feng a coin ridden with Asian letters and markings and Feng thanks her for the return of his five dollars. The language track makes the film appear farcical and one cannot take the whole “assassin” strand of the film’s plot seriously whilst one is laughing out loud as straight faced Chinese people shout at passers-by in American drawl which arises from their mouths despite the lips of the speaker failing to move.

There exists a long-running joke [which I have to admit I co-founded to a certain degree] which sums up the main problem with trying to stick a plot and characterisation onto celluloid when all your really want to do is film a massive fight. What’s the difference between ‘Rush Hour’ and ‘Rush Hour 2’? Answer: Nothing. In both films, Jackie Chan gets himself into a tricky situation and has to fight his way out using awesome fighting skills. There’s no story, no plot, no emotional contact with the viewer. Just an excuse for kung fu. Jet Li may be higher on the pedestal of Asian acting talent than Mr Chan and one has to admit that Li is the only actor worth watching in this film, but one still feels throughout the movie that, at any time, someone is going to say the wrong word or look at someone in the wrong way and the whole situation will erupt into chaos tinged with kicks and punches. The fight scenes are expertly choreographed and there’s no doubt that action movies pulsate with excitement. One watches Li to see him fight. Eric Tsang’s performance as the agent who is really a con man rapidly becomes tedious and all the remaining characters seem to do is wonder around looking for clues to the preposterous mystery behind the assassination of the Japanese mobster.

Sections of ‘Hit Man’ are unintentionally funny. Ten men in black suits and dark sunglasses leap over a fence in formation when one can clearly see it would have been far easier to go round the obstacle. Men with small black beards act as if they are the most menacing people in all of China and its provinces and the Hong Kong police officials appear to have spent far too much time watching the DVD box sets of N.Y.P.D Blue. ‘Hitman’ falls to hit the spot. The picture quality is superb and the sound quality, despite the dubbing, is passable. The extras are for fans of Jet Li and will keep such people preoccupied for hours. But, for the casual viewer, these extra inclusions re-enforce the notion that people took this laugh-out-loud farce of a film seriously. Ditch the fickle mistress of “punch and kick” comedy and return to the land where plot and story rule over the kingdom of celluloid. In short, give ‘Hitman’ a wide berth.



Martin Drury