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Hardcore Henry
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Final Verdict: [Okay]
Hardcore Henry
Sci-Fi Action / English / 2015
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
It was marketed as an entirely first-person action movie featuring parkour. Sounds cool, let's check it out.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Hardcore Henry is an extraordinarily perplexing movie. At it's peak it's a deliberately cheesy action movie romp with a fun quirk of the protagonist essentially smack-talking the other characters through body language like a self-aware video game. At it's depths, it's a gratuitously gory story about spilling as much blood and breaking as many bones as possible to defeat a guy with telekinesis (for some reason) and stop his cyborg mind-slave army.
Whereas I might immediately compare it to Maniac for it's camera gimmick, as the movie goes on I end up reminded of the more unpleasant mutilation scenes from that movie instead. But more than that movie, I'm reminded of Turbo Kid, because just like that movie, it appears to excel when it's tone is that of the more family-friendly/PG-13 genre it wants to glorify, but gets dragged down by an unhealthy obsession with gore.
In Turbo Kid I witnessed a bicycle being used to crank someone's intestines from their body. In Hardcore Henry, Henry literally pulls his own eye out of his head, wraps the cord around the Big Bad's head, and bisects the lower mandible from the rest of his skull.
I hadn't really considered that Henry's eyeball could be used as garrote wire, but there you have it. Apart from being absolutely ridiculous in the moment, I don't really get anything out of that, and the movie's not consistently ridiculous enough for it to feel appropriate. The trailers portrayed this as a conventional action movie with the flare of a first person character gunning down baddies from atop speeding vehicles. I'd call that quality entertainment, but whereas the first half of the movie verges on Jason Bourne in terms of narrative sincerity, the second half collapses into a mad spectacle of setpieces and intentionally goofy character moments, and ultimately culminates in visuals that don't resemble anything I would have expected or wanted out of a movie with that trailer.
The movie seems self-aware enough to splice in a Wilhelm during one of it's more on-the-nose action sequences, it mocks the notion of an epic horseriding sequence by having Henry bucked off, and it even plays Queen during the climax of the movie, but in the moments where there really isn't any subversive context to the scene, these elements just fall flat and out of place. I remember another obvious stock scream effect show up in one of the later fight sequences and just being taken aback because there really isn't anything silly going on beyond Henry being "Hardcore" and shooting lots of guys.
The main character apart from Henry is this British Guy who appears to show up in multiple outfits and personalities despite dying in previous scenes. I wasn't sure what was going on, but the protagonist doesn't have the voice to question it and the movie takes it sweet time getting around to rationalizing it. Henry's back-and-forth with British Guy however forced it feels at times is the only sign of humanity we really see in this movie, and it feels good when British Guy compliments Henry on murdering everyone in the room and Henry simply whips him an OK sign. That's cute, I like that, I wish more of the movie was like that.
But by the end we have a villain who, despite looking silly, doesn't really act silly enough to turn the movie into the satire it desperately wants to be. We establish we got cyber prosthetics so Henry can take a few more bumps that ordinary goons, but then out of nowhere, like in Looper, we have a telekinetic villain just flying into the air and throwing dead bodies around.
It might have been one thing if this movie tried to thrive on constant brutal intensity which movies like Speed and Fury Road did so well, it even sits itself up in this manner, literally telling Henry that he'll die in 20 minutes just as the movie begins to rev up, but that conflict is shortly resolved, we go to a whorehouse so British Guy can snort a line of coke and shoot guys in his underwear and the viewer can see women touch his crotch and... just like that the charm has totally worn off.
I credit the movie for some moments of complex choreography that they pull off and some understated CG that must have been necessary to pull certain stunts off, but just as the tone is inconsistent, so is the CG, as certain scenes just look like total trash out of nowhere.
It was an okay movie, and I'm sure you can have some spirited arguments with friends over how bizarre and ridiculous it gets, but while the package remains a mixed bag, I can't honestly recommend.
Whereas I might immediately compare it to Maniac for it's camera gimmick, as the movie goes on I end up reminded of the more unpleasant mutilation scenes from that movie instead. But more than that movie, I'm reminded of Turbo Kid, because just like that movie, it appears to excel when it's tone is that of the more family-friendly/PG-13 genre it wants to glorify, but gets dragged down by an unhealthy obsession with gore.
In Turbo Kid I witnessed a bicycle being used to crank someone's intestines from their body. In Hardcore Henry, Henry literally pulls his own eye out of his head, wraps the cord around the Big Bad's head, and bisects the lower mandible from the rest of his skull.
I hadn't really considered that Henry's eyeball could be used as garrote wire, but there you have it. Apart from being absolutely ridiculous in the moment, I don't really get anything out of that, and the movie's not consistently ridiculous enough for it to feel appropriate. The trailers portrayed this as a conventional action movie with the flare of a first person character gunning down baddies from atop speeding vehicles. I'd call that quality entertainment, but whereas the first half of the movie verges on Jason Bourne in terms of narrative sincerity, the second half collapses into a mad spectacle of setpieces and intentionally goofy character moments, and ultimately culminates in visuals that don't resemble anything I would have expected or wanted out of a movie with that trailer.
The movie seems self-aware enough to splice in a Wilhelm during one of it's more on-the-nose action sequences, it mocks the notion of an epic horseriding sequence by having Henry bucked off, and it even plays Queen during the climax of the movie, but in the moments where there really isn't any subversive context to the scene, these elements just fall flat and out of place. I remember another obvious stock scream effect show up in one of the later fight sequences and just being taken aback because there really isn't anything silly going on beyond Henry being "Hardcore" and shooting lots of guys.
The main character apart from Henry is this British Guy who appears to show up in multiple outfits and personalities despite dying in previous scenes. I wasn't sure what was going on, but the protagonist doesn't have the voice to question it and the movie takes it sweet time getting around to rationalizing it. Henry's back-and-forth with British Guy however forced it feels at times is the only sign of humanity we really see in this movie, and it feels good when British Guy compliments Henry on murdering everyone in the room and Henry simply whips him an OK sign. That's cute, I like that, I wish more of the movie was like that.
But by the end we have a villain who, despite looking silly, doesn't really act silly enough to turn the movie into the satire it desperately wants to be. We establish we got cyber prosthetics so Henry can take a few more bumps that ordinary goons, but then out of nowhere, like in Looper, we have a telekinetic villain just flying into the air and throwing dead bodies around.
It might have been one thing if this movie tried to thrive on constant brutal intensity which movies like Speed and Fury Road did so well, it even sits itself up in this manner, literally telling Henry that he'll die in 20 minutes just as the movie begins to rev up, but that conflict is shortly resolved, we go to a whorehouse so British Guy can snort a line of coke and shoot guys in his underwear and the viewer can see women touch his crotch and... just like that the charm has totally worn off.
I credit the movie for some moments of complex choreography that they pull off and some understated CG that must have been necessary to pull certain stunts off, but just as the tone is inconsistent, so is the CG, as certain scenes just look like total trash out of nowhere.
It was an okay movie, and I'm sure you can have some spirited arguments with friends over how bizarre and ridiculous it gets, but while the package remains a mixed bag, I can't honestly recommend.