Jellybean
09-13-17, 15:55
Never saw a review for this come across here, but some of you might remember seeing trailers from this when it came out. I thought it was an interesting concept, being it's all from the lead character's perspective in first person, but on release I read a lot of reviews complaining of jumpy camera sequences and poor story quality. So I moved on and pretty much forgot it existed.
I ended up watching it on a whim a few days back, and as usual... the critics were only half right.
Long story short, the character wakes up as a mechanically enhanced/reconstructed guy with his wife as the doctor/scientist that patched him up per some sort of horrific de-constructive previous life experience, the lab is attacked by some sort of terroristy fellows led by a maniac with psychic powers called "Akan", and Henry and his wife escape only for him to promptly have his ass kicked and his wife captured by Akan's merc/terrorist group. Thus begins a more-or-less non stop running battle with Henry traveling across half of Russia often aided by various delightfully loony sidekicks trying to charge his cyborg batteries and figure out who he is and what in the nine hells is even going on...
The good:
If you liked John Wick, you'll probably like this- it's pretty much JW in first person.
Camera work- there was a lot of bitching about the "headache inducing" and "too shaky" first person camera work. Well, I have to call bollocks on that. If you've played any first-person shooter extensively, or watched a lot of helmet cam or go-pro footage... you'll be fine. If the only things you ever watch are stately, well-shot "epic" movies... *maybe* you'll have some problems following.
And frankly, given the amount of go-pro and various other helmet/FP type videos I've seen, I've actually got to hand it to the studio for doing a very good job keeping things clear and decipherable, given the utterly wild pacing of most of the action sequences in this movie.
The other good part is the overall tone, despite the near constant fighting, is fairly light, and even hilariously so in some parts. As I mentioned before, his re-occurring sidekick[s] are just loony as hell, and there's a good amount of nod & wink/ tongue in cheek references to either other movies, video games, or just straight up cliches of action movies in general. There's one particular scene with a horse that pretty much sums up what I'm saying.
The bad:
Story- well, if you read the paragraph up there... congrats, there it is. No there isn't anything else to it. Well, ok... there's a couple slight twists with a couple of the characters, but if you're paying attention, you'll probably guess them halfway through the movie...
I keep comparing this to John Wick, and continuing with that, I feel like Hardcore Henry actually has less story than JW, if you thought that was possible... You're not going to be rewatching it for the deep insights into life the story or characters gave us, or even because you liked the characters themselves (well, maybe a little bit for that).
I feel very much like this was almost a "proof of concept" by the studio for FP camera work, that they said "ah, **** it let's take all these shots, add some extra to flesh it out enough for a movie and run with it". It really wouldn't have killed them to add another 15 minutes to flesh out the story and characters just a little bit more, especially Akan's character, which will have you perpetually wondering exactly WHY he can throw things across the room with his mind when nobody in the rest of the movie can, yet he needs to steal YOUR technology.... among other things.
Overall, for a glorious hour and forty-ish of ridiculous over the top bloody gunfights, knife-fights, hand-fights, and really anything you can use as a weapon in between, that at the same time doesn't take itself to seriously, I'd give it a split rating of B+ for the action, C- for the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96EChBYVFhU
I ended up watching it on a whim a few days back, and as usual... the critics were only half right.
Long story short, the character wakes up as a mechanically enhanced/reconstructed guy with his wife as the doctor/scientist that patched him up per some sort of horrific de-constructive previous life experience, the lab is attacked by some sort of terroristy fellows led by a maniac with psychic powers called "Akan", and Henry and his wife escape only for him to promptly have his ass kicked and his wife captured by Akan's merc/terrorist group. Thus begins a more-or-less non stop running battle with Henry traveling across half of Russia often aided by various delightfully loony sidekicks trying to charge his cyborg batteries and figure out who he is and what in the nine hells is even going on...
The good:
If you liked John Wick, you'll probably like this- it's pretty much JW in first person.
Camera work- there was a lot of bitching about the "headache inducing" and "too shaky" first person camera work. Well, I have to call bollocks on that. If you've played any first-person shooter extensively, or watched a lot of helmet cam or go-pro footage... you'll be fine. If the only things you ever watch are stately, well-shot "epic" movies... *maybe* you'll have some problems following.
And frankly, given the amount of go-pro and various other helmet/FP type videos I've seen, I've actually got to hand it to the studio for doing a very good job keeping things clear and decipherable, given the utterly wild pacing of most of the action sequences in this movie.
The other good part is the overall tone, despite the near constant fighting, is fairly light, and even hilariously so in some parts. As I mentioned before, his re-occurring sidekick[s] are just loony as hell, and there's a good amount of nod & wink/ tongue in cheek references to either other movies, video games, or just straight up cliches of action movies in general. There's one particular scene with a horse that pretty much sums up what I'm saying.
The bad:
Story- well, if you read the paragraph up there... congrats, there it is. No there isn't anything else to it. Well, ok... there's a couple slight twists with a couple of the characters, but if you're paying attention, you'll probably guess them halfway through the movie...
I keep comparing this to John Wick, and continuing with that, I feel like Hardcore Henry actually has less story than JW, if you thought that was possible... You're not going to be rewatching it for the deep insights into life the story or characters gave us, or even because you liked the characters themselves (well, maybe a little bit for that).
I feel very much like this was almost a "proof of concept" by the studio for FP camera work, that they said "ah, **** it let's take all these shots, add some extra to flesh it out enough for a movie and run with it". It really wouldn't have killed them to add another 15 minutes to flesh out the story and characters just a little bit more, especially Akan's character, which will have you perpetually wondering exactly WHY he can throw things across the room with his mind when nobody in the rest of the movie can, yet he needs to steal YOUR technology.... among other things.
Overall, for a glorious hour and forty-ish of ridiculous over the top bloody gunfights, knife-fights, hand-fights, and really anything you can use as a weapon in between, that at the same time doesn't take itself to seriously, I'd give it a split rating of B+ for the action, C- for the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96EChBYVFhU