Timothy Olyphant takes aim as a genetically-engineered hitman known as Agent 47. Ooooh, scary! (Supplied photo)

Basically Shoot 'Em Up with more of a plot (and more plot holes), Hitman is the latest attempt to make a movie out of a popular video game. The record of success remains intact.

In the case of "shooter" games such as Hitman, there's a suspension of disbelief that doesn't easily translate to the big-screen. The central one in Hitman is that there's a secret organization of, well, hitmen, run by "The Agency." Said agency may or may not be the CIA, but it's apparently open to contracting killers for pretty much anybody.

Said hitmen -- raised from childhood to kill -- are identifiable by their shaved heads and bar-code tattoos on the back of their scalps, which they don't even cover with a hat in public. I suppose if you believe that a pair of glasses can render Clark Kent unidentifiable as Superman, you can believe that a young, buff, well-dressed Lex Luthor with concealed weapons can walk around the great cities of the world with the code for Dempster's Whole Wheat on the back of his skull, yet Interpol can spend years scratching its head and declaring what a phantom he is.

Chief among the mystified is Mike (Dougray Scott), an Interpol supercop who has been on the trail of 47 (Timothy Olyphant) for seven years and, apparently, hasn't trained his field agents to pick up the Batphone at the very sight of a cranial barcode.

The fact that they dress and shave their heads alike also makes it a little bit hard to follow when agency hitmen fight among themselves -- which is what happens when 47 is given an assignment to assassinate a "progressive" candidate for the Russian presidency. Mission accomplished, or maybe not, and anyway there's a beautiful Russian callgirl (Olga Kurylenko) who's also marked for death, and the whole thing's a setup anyway. Soon our anti-hero and heroine are on the run, unravelling a plot that reaches to the very leadership of the nation, pausing every so often for her to be gratuitously nude and for him to wreak havoc. What's there for a gamer not to like?

As mentioned, there are substantial similarities between this movie and the recent Clive Owen shoot-'em-up Shoot 'Em Up (professional killer and hooker-in-distress solve political conspiracy with a massive collateral bodycount). The difference: Shoot 'Em Up had a higher body count and took itself a lot less seriously.

In Hitman, a little tongue-in-cheek would have helped gloss over some of the gizmo-gimmickry that wasn't all that well thought out. For instance, when he checks into a hotel room, 47 attaches an explosive device to his door (no Do Not Disturb sign for him) that will explode when the door opens, killing his attackers (and probably one or two room-service guys) and destroying the room, giving him just enough time to jump out the window. Um, but what happens if they try to enter while he's asleep?

In his performance, Olyphant takes the "machine" part of killing machine a little too literally (with his California accent in monotone, he sounds uncannily like Robert Wagner). Kurylenko screams, complains and cajoles exactly as a woman in her position is supposed to in an action film.

The rest is all pyro, sound and fury we've all heard before in ear-splitting Dolby, signifying nothing but an hour and a half of time assassinated.
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