With so much marketing and promise going into it, Hitman fails to break the game to movie curse by relinquishing most of what made the gaming series unique and intriguing instead turning it into another run of the mill, guns akimbo, shooting fest that has the flavor of the Transporter with only a fraction of the fun.

Hitman‘s main protagonist, Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant), has been one of the most interesting leading men in video games with is dark black suit, signature red tie, and dual Silverballer weapons, the bald assassin had style and was interesting in all aspects. The game series’ storyline was also one of the more intriguing elements of the whole package with a genetically engineered assassin working for a secretive agency which adds layers to the fold as the series continues. The movie is a 2D extrapolation of this with only 47 and his handler Diana surviving. The script for the film shuns any real influence from the game series, instead placing Agent 47 into a Russian political controversy complete with a witness who knows too much and a compassionate hero who kills, but still has a heart.

There’s just so much cliché elements to the story that it becomes weighted down by its own lunacy as the picture wears on. The story is loose as best, and seems to only want to string together gun fight after gun fight. Yet, where movies like Shoot ‘em Up did this correctly, leaving story by the wayside and going strictly for testosterone fueled mayhem, Hitman just can’t leave behind its fractured narrative, which is a real shame because the game series has a unique and sometimes involving crux to stand on in the storytelling department. This should come as no surprise, however, from the man who wrote the similarly shallow Swordfish.

Olyphant, a personal favorite for his work on HBO’s Deadwood, seems uncomfortable in the role originally intended for Vin Diesel. His action comes off as wooden, although this could be attributed to the character. He spends the entire movie hauling around Nika (Olga Kurylenko) a prostitute who has been marked for death who was only saved by 47’s realization that he was set up to kill her. This all boils back into the political espionage plotline that is never really developed and turns into more of a joke than anything else as the story goes on.

Throughout the film 47 is pursued by Interpol and the Russian secret service, one hoping to capture him, the latter hoping to kill him to cover up their dark secret. All that really matters here for fans of the game is that the original storyline does nothing to really introduce us to the title character, nor inherit anything worthwhile from the game series even though the marketing of the film would lead you down that path. No where in the running time does it explain how 47 is “protected by divinity” and even through a series of flashbacks and a few fleeting lines of dialog do you even know how he came to be. A simple origin story, and the early missions would have been a great movie if done right, instead, this is what we get.

Hitman is yet another failed attempt to successfully create a mass-market video game movie while keeping the fans happy and the consumers buying tickets. Maybe one day a movie based on a game will be made where the source material is used more liberally, and the constructive story that’s been created over an entire console generation is not ignored. As it stands the film is a splattered mess of idiotic proportions and failed opportunities, yet another notch on the bedpost of mediocrity.

Hollywood Goes Gaming, as part of Starz’s new Starz Inside series hosted by Richard Roeper, dives into the history of the union between the video game and movie industries and the fruits and rotten apples cultivated from years of development, blunders, and an occasional blockbuster.

The program really focuses in on the beginnings of this brain trust with films like Disney’s Tron, which were more inspired by video games than actually based on them. The epitome of bad licensing, E.T.: The Game, is touch on more than once as single handedly crippling the collaboration between the two industries and sending video game companies into the great market crash.

The program touches on a few big movies including Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider giving some interesting tidbits that many fans might not have known about including the husband and wife tandem directors of Super Mario Bros. telling you how they really feel about the script and the film, and the backstory about how much work Eidos has to put into making Lara Croft into a marketing icon before a movie studio would even think about touching the property (and making all that fanboy money).

The hour showcase does miss a few notable entries including only touching upon the Resident Evil series (one of the most financially successful crossovers) not mentioning Final Fantasy, the hugely successful Pokémon, or Silent Hill and the huge stable of upcoming releases stuck in development, or moving forward like Alice and World of WarCraft.

When journeying on the flip side (games from movie licenses) the program only spends a few minutes showing examples like Superman Returns and never showing some of the critical blunders like Superman 64 and just about every animated film to game transition in the last ten years. Even a solid mention of GoldenEye 007 as one of the greatest games of all time would have provided enough lip-service to fans.

Catering to the controversy surrounding him, the special devotes a sizable amount of time to Uwe Boll, the modern day Ed Wood who is the antagonist to many video game fans. With his stable of release critically and commercially panned, and upcoming films already garnering unrespectable buzz, the scourge of gamers pleads his case with references to his boxing matches against his critics and his feelings when he gets a bad review. There isn’t much new here in the constant battle of gamers attempting to preserve their beloved licenses.

Maybe an hour wasn’t enough to fully realize the connection between video games and Hollywood, but what we do get is a respectable look at how some of the gaming world’s biggest properties made the less than successful transition to movies, and vise versa as the age of cross marketing continues unabated. Maybe a follow up in a year or two can divulge more information on modern day practices, including the outright licensing of a property before the movie is even completed. As a casual look at Hollywood‘s journey through gaming territory, Hollywood Goes Gaming provides enough topical information, but for the deeper discussion of business practice you’ll need to look elsewhere.