The head of this outfit, a man called Le Clerq, is played behind a bank of touch-screen remote controls by the German Liam Neeson, Thomas Kretschmann. The story so far being wiped clean, we’re plunged into the action in Salzburg, where Friend’s nameless agent goes head-to-head with members of a dastardly global corporation. Like the main character he’s writing around, Woods has a job to do that you’d ideally take your name off: if the hit goes well, it’s best all round if you manage to slink off unnoticed. Writers-for-hire routinely have to tear their scripts up and start from scratch, but it’s rare to have one actually made and then pretend it never happened.
The odd point of overlap is that Hitman: Agent 47 gives a story and screenplay credit to one Skip Woods, who also did the earlier film. Instead, they’ve simply done it over, this time with German money, a different star (Rupert Friend) and a distinctly more clinical tone. Timothy Olyphant played the role in a French-American co-production, back in 2007 – a moderate global hit, but not well-received enough to spawn a conventional sequel. Hitman is a Danish-produced stealth video game franchise in which you play a bald, cloned assassin with a barcode on the back of his head.
