In this movie and its disavowed predecessor, he’s a dour, lifeless presence, and because neither movie understands that Hitman is about strategy and deception, both strive for whirling, slow-motion shootouts which get right to the heart of exactly what’s wrong with most video game-to-movie adaptations. Agent 47 requires him to keep emotion at arm’s length, which worked in the games because they rarely required 47 to be himself. But he’s better in something like David Mackenzie’s prison drama Starred Up, in which he plays a therapist who’s allowed to feel the words in the script. The movie insists that this character has been genetically engineered to feel no pain, no fear, no love, and how do you play that? Friend has done this kind of work before, primarily as a dead-eyed CIA muckety-muck in HBO’s Homeland.

This time the reins of Agent 47 have been handed to Rupert Friend, an actor who is nowhere near as inherently interesting as Olyphant and who finds himself similarly defeated by the role. He doesn’t see Agent 47 as a silent assassin like they do, but instead a noisy, thoroughly unlikeable mass-murderer who seems as clueless about his presence here as we do. Skip Woods clearly recognises the cinematic potential of Hitman, but now that his name has reappeared as a co-writer in the credits of Hitman: Agent 47, it’s clear he doesn’t really understand what’s truly compelling about these games. I bent over backwards trying to defend that movie, in part because I hoped its frequent missteps were taken with the aim of exploring a different side of these characters and ideas. As the sole credited screenwriter on 2007’s Hitman, he wrote Timothy Olyphant into an incoherent plot stuffed with excessive, meaningless violence and inane dialogue. I have no idea which version of these games Skip Woods has been playing.

The men and women whom 47 is paid to eliminate are more ideally offed in scenarios that resemble accidents despite the trademark dual Silverballers, 47 is less a gunslinger than the Final Destination version of Death – a walking, talking random tragedy. Unsanctioned deaths, civilian witnesses and noticeable evidence are all prohibitive. Earning the moniker isn’t easy to do so, Agent 47, the bald, bar-coded contract killer, must infiltrate a location undetected, eliminate his target anonymously and escape without a trace. In the Hitman video games, the most prestigious ranking you can attain is that of “Silent Assassin”.

Hitman 2 silent assassin slow motion