Two films based on video games and featuring hyper-capable focus characters. One surprised me by being quite enjoyable, the other lived up entirely to my expectations.
Resident Evil: Extinction 6/10
Alice is frequently off-screen and this is much the better for that. The secondary characters are much better fleshed-out (sorry) for that and we get that sense of their fighting of a losing battle to survive (I enjoyed the little nod to Planet of the Apes).
The action is mostly OK if frequently implausible. Despite being hyper-capable, there were still clear limits to Alice's powers and so it didn't feel as though each battle were a foregone conclusion, even in the final boss-battle. The horror element often worked very well, with several creepy, tense, even frightening scenes.
Don't get me wrong, this is still a film based on a video game (and previous outings have been pretty grim) but I thought it well above average for the genre.
Hitman 3/10
This better met my expectations.
Empty of character, the nameless cypher (literally in this case) needed by a video game did not translate well to the big screen. Generating sympathy for the viewpoint character when he is, by profession, a stone-cold killer is always a tough sell and Hitman wasn't up to the job.
The seemingly infinite resources of the viewpoint character (at one point, down to just the shirt on his back but five minutes of screen time later, possessed of an arsenal that would leave Neo envious) killed any possibility of tension and the murky plot failed to convince that the baddies were really that bad (or capable).