There were truly no new releases this week you guys. Well not literally. Cabin in the Woods did debut, but it’s only playing in three (this time literally) cinemas in Melbourne, so I didn’t get to see it. If you do get a chance though, it’s receiving a lot of acclaim in America as one of the most original and terrifying horror thrillers in years. But then America says the same things about the newest variation on fried chicken, so maybe don’t trust them.

Anyway, you think this might’ve been an opportunity to watch a real classic, maybe a brilliant oscar winner, or one of my personal favourites. At the very least, something half decent after all the awful films I’ve seen in recent weeks.

Well, it’s an opportunity I promptly wasted by watching Hitman, a movie listed by Time magazine as one of the top ten worst films based on a video game, which is kind of like pointing out the blackest part of a piece of poo, which is itself serving as the manure for some really beautiful flowers (films). It’s so bad, I nearly wanted to shoot myself, which would’ve been strangely appropriate for a movie about a guy who shoots people.

LESSON 1: IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE A BAD FILM, STEAL A BETTER FILM’S NAME

There has been Hitman in 1991 staring Chuck Norris, and Hitman in 1998 starring Jet Li, but I decided to go with the 2007 Hitman which stars Timothy Olyphant, because when I’m trying to choose a movie based on if it might be half decent, or one of the guys in it has a funny last name, you know I’m going to pick the one with the biggest stars. Because elephants are big animals, you know. And his last name is kind of like elephant.

Lesson? Sometimes the internet lets you down. I spent like half an hour trying to find some way of making fun of Timothy’s family heritage, and is there really nothing else except the “irrelephant” pun. Which doesn’t even fit anyway because he spells it “oly” not “ele”.

Good lord this is off to a bad start. I wish I had watched either of the other Hitman movies. Jet li would’ve been a good Hitman. Chuck Norris spraying everyone with a machine gun probably doesn’t have enough finesse to define himself as a Hitman over a Whack Job.

LESSON 2: BOOBS ARE INTERESTING TO LOOK AT, BUT OFTEN SUPERFLUOUS

Now I’m a fan of gratuitous female nudity as much as the next fat, beer swilling, sexist pig, but I draw the line at random gratuitous female nudity. There has to be a reason in the story for why people are getting naked, because people don’t just drop their clothes for no reason. But if someone orders you a pizza and you have no other way to pay, then sure, I am ok with that nakedness because it is a logical progression of the narrative.

Game of Thrones is particularly good at plot driven nakedness, because even though there’s a lot of boobs, the guy owns a brothel, so they HAVE to be naked. At least I think they do. Mum banned me from watching Game of Thrones because there was too much nudity. And because I didn’t take the garbage out.

Hitman has a naked woman because when you’re making a film for sixteen year old boys, it’s the only thing left to tick off after guns, explosions and car chases.

Lesson? It takes a lot more than showing a set of boobs to save a bad movie. You have to show at least three sets of boobs.

LESSON 3: HATS ARE BOTH TRENDY AND SUN SMART

You know who’s the bad guy? Of course you do. It’s always the guy with the goatee, or the scar over his eye, or the guy who’s really really pale. These are classic bad guy looks which are always in vogue. In Hitman’scase, the bad guy is the one with the big goddam barcode tattooed on the back of his bald head.

I understand that maybe this was the evil organisation’s way of keeping track of all their bald agents, but that in itself is a bad aesthetic for a league of assassins to maintain, and not just from an administration point of view. Because bald people are weird looking. You know they are. Little kids point them out and ask their mothers “what is wrong with that guy who can’t grow hair?”. So if your one task is to kill people covertly, you’re already one step behind when children under the age of five are installed as the security system.

Lesson? There should be more five year old policemen. I can’t see any way this could go wrong.

But if you’re an assassin, grow some hair. Not black hair though. Because that’s another bad guy giveaway; he ALWAYS has black hair. Except when he’s bald.

LESSON 4: ENSURE YOUR EVIL CORPORATION HAS REASONABLE MIDDLE MANAGEMENT

Hitman pulls a bit of a The Bourne Identity and has the main assassin go after the organisation which trained him after realising they are evil.

So, there, I’ve ruined two movies for you.

This shouldn’t really be such a problem for the evil organisation though, because surely they know literally everything the assassin knows. They trained him. He can’t outwit them. They know what kind of tactics he’s going to use because they invented them. Yeah, freak out a little, because you know what a badass he is and no one wants that coming back to bite them, but you trained a whole heap of other assassins who should be able to take him out pretty easily.

But of course the one assassin who suddenly overcomes his brainwashing and discovers morality is some sort of super-assassin, and is capable of taking on three other assassins at once. I don’t think having a conscience gives you super-powers. I’ve never found it to be anything other than a burden, and am constantly dreaming about all the babies’ candy I could have if only…

The problem with these other assassins is that when they finally corner him at gunpoint, they agree when he challenges them to hand to hand combat. Don’t do that. Shoot the prick as soon as he opens his mouth. Sure knife fights look better to the viewers at home, but I’m sure your boss didn’t attach a sticky note to your orders that said “make it look cool”. Of course he wouldn’t. He would’ve just got his secretary to retype the orders.

Lesson? Don’t go into the training evil assassins business. It’s bad in this economy anyway. Train lions, or tigers, or monkeys who ride unicycles. They’ve never killed their trainers. Well the monkeys haven’t. Unless they get a hold of some guns. Oh crap, I didn’t think of that. Now I’ve got to train some sort of bicycle riding, cannon wielding eagle as a bodyguard. Or a giraffe. Or hippo. Look, the type of animal is IRRELEPHANT.

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