This $125M Jason Statham Sequel Is Accidentally A Great Adaptation Of A Classic Game

 

A Jason Statham action movie sequel doubles as the best adaptation of a classic video game. Over the last 20 years, Statham has done a nice job of building franchises around himself. While he’s a big part of both the Fast & Furious and Expendables, most Jason Statham franchises are solo affairs. This includes his breakthrough in The Transporter movies, which transformed his career almost immediately from the star of Guy Ritchie gangster films into the unlikely successor to actors like Sylvester Stallone.

One of Statham’s most underrated offerings is 2011’s The Mechanic, a glossy remake of a Charles Bronson film. This cast Statham as an assassin who specializes in making his kills look like accidents, though it quickly abandons this premise in favor of his character Bishop punching/kicking/shooting his way out of trouble. The film was successful enough to spawn a sequel in 2016, though Mechanic: Resurrection has so little connection to the first filmit may as well have been a standalone project.

Jason Statham’s Mechanic: Resurrection Is The Best Adaptation Of Hitman: Agent 47

The Mechanic 2 is the best live-action Hitman adaptation to date

That’s not to say there isn’t fun to be had with Mechanic: Resurrection, where Statham’s Bishop is forced out of retirement to save his lover (played by Jessica Alba). Bishop is tasked with pulling off three elaborate hits and must make them all look like accidents. It’s not Statham’s best action movie, but it’s an enjoyable piece of pulp with an overqualified supporting cast, which includes Michelle Yeoh and Tommy Lee Jones. It’s also the best adaptation of the Hitman: Agent 47 video game series.

That includes the two actual Hitman movies that were produced in 2007 and 2015, respectively. Both Hitman and Mechanic: Resurrection feature bald assassins with legendary reputations who engineer their killings to look like accidents. The extended sequence where Bishop sneaks into a high rise and shatters the glass bottom of a target’s overhanging swimming pool could be a mission lifted right out of the Hitman series.

The games give players the freedom to approach a mission however they choose. They can absorb every detail of a map and design elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque ways of terminating a target, or they can pick up a machine gun and mow everybody down. Mechanic: Resurrection’s Bishop takes the same approach, being stealthy one moment or shooting his way out the next. It’s this blend that makes Resurrection feel like the Hitman: Agent 47 film fans of the game have clamored for since the series began.

Why Jason Statham Passed On Starring In An Actual Hitman Adaptation

Statham and Vin Diesel share more than Fast & Furious in common

Every Hitman Movie
Agent 47 Actor
Box Office Gross
Rotten Tomatoes

Hitman (2007)
Timothy Olyphant
$99.1 million
16%

Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)
Rupert Friend
$82. 2 million
8%

When 2007’s Hitman movie was announced, Vin Diesel was meant to both star and produce the movie. Diesel later fell out of the film, and Jason Statham as Agent 47 was the next logical choice, but soon passed. The star has seemingly never given an official comment on why he rejected Hitman, though Statham reportedly felt the character was too similar to The Transporter’s Frank Martin. Both are professionals that wear nice suits, keep their emotions in check and follow strict codes when it comes to work.

Both the Hitman film and The Transporter were also co-produced by Luc Besson, with Statham even prepping for The Transporter 3 around this period. It appears the filming dates for Hitman and the star’s crime thriller The Bank Job overlapped slightly, so scheduling could have been another issue. Statham could have also decided that the casting was a little too perfect and was perhaps growing tired of being offered the same type of roles.

Why None Of The Actual Hitman Movies Worked

Neither Hitman adaptation understood what made the games great

 

Timothy Olyphant later explained why he didn’t make Hitman 2, admitting he took the original and Live Free or Die Hard because he had just bought a house, and after Deadwood was canceled, so he needed money. He later gave an unflattering but hilarious comment on his decision to star in the video game movie to Rolling Stone, and how it led to him being more selective moving ahead.

Find yourself bald in Bulgaria doing some pile of s***, that will get you up a little earlier in the morning and make you work a little harder.

Rupert Friend later took the titular role in the soft reboot Hitman: Agent 47, and while both films turned comfortable profits, neither received direct sequels. Olyphant is a great actor, but he was utterly miscast in Hitman for several reasons. By design, Agent 47 is a stern, near-emotionless character. That’s obviously tough to translate for a mainstream audience, but the movie tried to take the opposite approach by giving him a love interest and being more openly emotional. This robbed the character of mystique, while the film was more of a straight-ahead, gory action movie that rarely featured the killer getting creative.

Hitman: Agent 47 is arguably the better of the two live-action movies, with Friend milking some dry humor out of the hitman’s trademark stoicism. Still, the emphasis was once again on overblown setpieces, and Agent 47’s creativity when it came to assassinating targets was again ignored. Without really trying, Mechanic: Resurrection provided a rough blueprint for what a faithful Hitman movie could look like, but since the franchise has been quiet for some time, series devotees might be waiting a while for a third attempt to finally get things right.