Timothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard) takes on the role of Agent 47 in 20th Century Fox’s action drama, Hitman, based on the popular Eidos videogame franchise. Directed by Xavier Gens, Hitman follows the deadly assassin Agent 47, a hired killer whose name matches the tattooed barcode on his neck. Caught up in a political conspiracy, Agent 47 finds himself in the position of the hunted rather than the hunter as becomes the target of both Interpol and the Russian military.
Exactly Who is Agent 47?: Olyphant did his best to describe the character for those unfamiliar with the video game. “He’s essentially this guy who was born and bred for the purpose of killing. The story is essentially is about this guy, he was hired to do this job and he does it, seemingly as well as he’s done any other. Then he’s told by the people he works for there was a witness and he’s got to clean that up. Something’s not right when he sees her – it’s a woman played by Olga Kurylenko, who’s just fantastic. She did a really lovely job. And there appears to be no recognition when she sees him, which obviously means something’s not right. The next thing we know is someone is trying to kill me; the guy who I thought I killed is on television and nothing makes sense anymore. This guy’s world is being turned upside down.”
Getting Into Character: “I think the angle I take is, you trust that sort of takes care of itself,” explained Olyphant. “You kill a bunch of guys in an elevator and you walk out the only guy without a scratch on you. That defines who you are. And so you trust that, and you can leave that alone. You can say, ‘I don’t really need to try to convince everyone I’m a badass cause I just walked into that situation and I’m the one who comes out without a scratch,’ and so you kind of put that aside.
What else you try and do is say, ‘What else is there? How many other angles can you look at this and where is the humanity in it all?’ You start with a guy who goes from job to job to job, and it sounds sort of a cliché. It’s sort of a lonely existence – a traveling salesman. And I thought for a second, I thought it was kind of interesting to try and look at his job prior to the events that start to happen. It’s kind of mundane, job to job. You’re really good at what you do. It’s probably pretty easy, and you’re not really engaging with too many people. There’s probably some kind of detachment from it all to go out and do it. And then that starts to get kind of interesting - when you look at something that’s special, and you try and figure out what’s pedestrian about it.
The second thing that starts to happen is you realize [who] this guy is and you start to turn it upside down. What happens when that guy’s world just turns completely upside down? And you have this sense of a soldier, who essentially his job is ‘you point, and I shoot.’ That’s basically the assassin, because the assassin isn’t choosing who dies and who doesn’t die. Someone gives him a target and he goes and takes it out. And so what happens when there’s no trust and there’s no boss? The boss isn’t to be trusted; the target isn’t being given to you. Who do you take out and who do you not take out? And what starts to happen is it starts to have him examine, in some sort of unconscious way, what else is there. ‘If I’m not that guy, than do I have any other job skills?’ You start looking at it that way, and those are very human experiences and everyone can relate to that. Everyone can relate to the carpet being pulled out from under you. Everyone can relate to the idea of asking yourself, ‘Is this who I am, or am I capable of being someone else?’ Not necessarily something better, but something else, and is that just pre-determined. Those are interesting things to try and explain.”
The Source Material: Olyphant researched the game on the internet prior to stepping into character. “It felt like we did a – based on what I read and what I understand – a good job of honoring and paying tribute to the game, but at the same time we weren’t really slaves to it. It was a nice place to work from. Xavier [Gens] was a big fan of the game – the director – a big gamer, in general. He got really involved and was really adamant about certain things that were reflected in the game. I also just thought that other than the imagery I saw, there were a lot of things that once we got our hands on the script that Xavier and I both saw eye to eye on. It’s hard to tell what came first – whether we read about something in the game that inspired choices that were made or whether they were choices we wanted to do that were also reflected in the game. We were conscious to it the whole time.”
About Those Reshoots: Olyphant says more action was added to the film during the reshoot process. “We did this kick-ass little action sequence in there, a couple little touch-up’s and stuff, and little bits and little inserts. It’s lovely to have that luxury. And then we had this action sequence that we sort of added.”
Olyphant’s very aware of the rumors swirling around the reshoots. Leading up to the film’s release there has been a lot of buzz that director Gens had been fired and didn’t handle the reshoots. “He is involved, he’s very involved; I saw him when I was there,” said Olyphant with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Laughing, Olyphant went on to say, “He did not direct the re-shoots, but I don’t know what Fox’s position is on that – maybe he did direct the re-shoots? But, yeah, no I heard that talk that he was fired and I kept saying I was trying to get that guy fired for months. They finally fired him? F---! I was saying forever, ‘He doesn’t speak English, doesn’t anyone see that as a problem?’”
Page 2: The Violence in Hitman and Olyphant's Next Film
