Do you love the Hitman video game? Did you like Timothy Olyphant’s performance in 2007’s Hitman, or did you prefer Rupert Friend’s incarnation in the recent Hitman; Agent 47? Whatever your knowledge of the Hitman IP, you’ll be utterly bamboozled when a film called Hitman Redemption turns up on Netflix UK. Why? Because it is absolutely nothing to do with the Hitman series, and why they should be masquerading as such is anyone’s guess.
This movie was released as Asher during a US release last year, and it stars the always personable Ron Perlman as an aging hit-man who has a crisis when a job goes wrong. Whatever this film’s merits, giving the film the title of a different and far better known IP is a recipe for unsatisfied customers.
Having got all that out of the way, Hitman Redemption aka Asher is a decent little B movie that has a few points of genuine interest. Firstly, director Michael Caton-Jones is a very safe pair of hands, with a few notable successes (Memphis Belle, Scandal, Rob Roy) and an ability to get difficult films over the line (Basic Instinct 2). He uses a bluesy score here to give atmosphere to some fairly rote professional assassin shenanigans, with Asher finding his relationship with his handler (Richard Dreyfuss) under pressure. But there’s a sub-plot involving Asher’s fading abilities, and his relationship with a neighbour Sophie (Famke Janssen) that nearly turns the film on it’s head.
Viewers expecting video-game antics are going to be profoundly mystified by watching Sophie struggling to deal with her mother’s dementia and incontinence, and the contrast between her problems and Asher’s is interesting. And the mother character is played with surprising depth by Jacqueline Bisset, who makes something moving and memorable of her scenes. The action is short and not particularly distinguished, but there’s just enough meat on the bones to suggest why such a strong cast was attracted to this project.
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