UPDATE: An update to this article has been posted here.
As I was sitting in the theater today discussing with a couple of my peers the state of films as of late I asked them to name the last film from 20th Century Fox that could actually be considered a quality film. The response was Master and Commander, which meant we had to go back four years. Of course this was a conversation where we were thinking off the top of our heads and forgot about Walk the Line, but to be able to only point out two films out of the past four years is not an impressive stat. If Fox had released Ridley Scott’s director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven it would be three movies. Had they treated their X-Men franchise with more respect maybe it would be four. If they had gone for an R-rated effort with AVP I might even give them five films, but this is a studio that proves they like to water down their movies and ruin a director’s vision, and they are at it again.
I think most people will say they liked Live Free or Die Hard, but there is no denying it was watered down from an R-rated cut. So much so that there is one instance where there is obvious ADR as Justin Long is saying one thing, but the words we are hearing aren’t matching up. How a guy gets tossed into a grinder and there is no blood is beyond me, and a Die Hard movie in which McClaine isn’t saying “fuck” every ten seconds just isn’t the same.
Where is all this coming from and what does it have to do with Hitman? Well, you can get ready for your Unrated DVDs right now as the film’s potential of being good is creeping out the window as Twitchfilm is reporting that director Xavier Gens has just had the film yanked from his control after turning in “an explicitly violent, very bloody cut of the film that apparently included a number of head shots and extreme gore moments that would have guaranteed the film a hard R rating.”
Oh damn, he turned in exactly what the fans want. Screw that noise, let’s gut this bitch and add a couple of Pokemon shots. Well, that is exactly what Twitch reports Fox is doing saying that Nicolas De Toth is now in control of a new edit of the film. De Toth was the fella put in charge to turn in an entirely bloodless version of Live Free or Die Hard and is allegedly set to do the same thing to Hitman.
I have been on the fence with this film since the first trailer hit. Timothy Olyphant does not look like he fits the role, but the trailers were fantastic. I kept my hopes high until now. If this news proves to be true then you can toss this one into the AVP file and expect a sequel to Hitman called Hitman-R like they are doing with AVP-R.
A sad state of affairs if you ask me as directors seem to be losing any and all artistic control over their films. While DVD has made home viewing much more fun the unrated bullshit cuts are hurting what we see in theaters and it’s a shame a director’s original vision is rarely going to see the bigscreen unless they go by the names of Scorsese or Spielberg, which leaves little chance for the newcomers.
