Action cinema is a pain to bring to light. Let’s be clear that every film is difficult to make and they all have inherent problems, ranging from little to gigantic nuances. But action takes the cake when it comes to painstakingly long hours and the mundane repetition that is required to capture the choreography of a scene just right. Each take usually only lasts a handful of seconds and then there’s a cut, redress, and the shot starts all over again until the director likes what he or she gets and they can move on. This isn’t including the thousands of man-hours that it takes to prep the scene in pre-production, nor all of the hard work in the editing room to bring the sequence together in post-production. The whole of a film is made up of many countless fractions.
Big action filmmakers like Michael Bay are known for being able to get coverage and producing a product that will be consumed, no matter the quality. Though most of his films are hot garbage, one has to doff their cap for the amount of things Bay is able to shoot/blow up and project on-screen. Since action is such a time-consuming endeavor and has been accomplished well by the greats for decades, there needs to be innovation as to how one shoots and conveys the action to the audience.
First time director Ilya Naishuller has tried to make grand leaps in action with Hardcore Henry, by entirely composing the narrative from a first-person point of view. The results are half-c*cked and often unrecognizable, but it is commendable that Naishuller goes all the way and never once apologizes for his commitment to a frenetic style.
Who am I?
The central character of the film is the titular hero, Henry, who awakens with amnesia in a laboratory. His left arm is missing below the elbow, as is his left leg below the knee. In the room with him is a woman named Estelle (Haley Bennett), and she quickly informs Henry that she is his wife. She uploads a form of Kung Fu training a la The Matrix into Henry just before they are attacked by the evil Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), who wants to take over the world with an army of mind-controlled super soldiers. From there, Akan takes Estelle hostage, and for the rest of the movie Henry fights his way through countless henchmen and Russian landscapes to win back the woman he ostensibly loves.
Akan ends up being more than just a villain, but a supervillain with capabilities beyond a normal person. Henry is virtually indestructible, because essentially, Hardcore Henry is a video game movie. Henry is the camera being controlled off-screen by Naishuller’s hands, and Henry’s quest is to save a female in distress, the most common and worn out of all narrative tropes. That Akan has unexplained powers gives him something extra that otherwise would have made him just another normal baddie with a foreign accent. Estelle, too, has the slightest bit of dimension to her bland conception despite the fact that by the end she just winds up being a pawn in the service of the male gaze.
The one character in Hardcore Henry who ends up giving the film levity and a spark of life is Jimmy, played wonderfully by Sharlto Copley. Jimmy winds up helping Henry on his way to get the girl, and though specifics of his characterization can’t be revealed do to spoiler concerns, just know that he gets to play multiple roles, each with an entirely different personality. Copley’s charisma and wit are sure-fire in a film otherwise devoid of interesting or tangible characters. The people on-screen aren’t really people to speak of, but are things Henry has to pass in order to make it to the final boss.
A View to a Barf
If it seems like there are half-praises mixed with full-on jabs at Hardcore Henry in this review, it’s because there is that duality. As said earlier, it is a film with the idea of passion and eccentricities but never once fulfills those ambitions. The biggest problem is the nauseating and vomit inducing POV, which is the very conceit of the film. At times when the action is slowed down or Jimmy is rambling on revealing the exposition, the film works and is engaging.
But then those moments are undermined, not for the better, by the worst shaky-cam this side of Batman v Superman. It gets so bad that at times one ponders leaving the theater, or better yet should be counseled to bring a barf bag. Shaking the camera does not make a film more immersive or realistic, but puts a distance to an established viewer that is unintended.
On the flip-side, that Naishuller went full steam with this notion is ballsy. It’s tragic, flawed, and ultimately a disappointment, but there is a beauty to be found like when Icarus soared too high and fell back to earth. Apparently, this film is making strides with younger audience members who gave the film an A on Cinemascore, while people 50 and older have been rating it an F. There is clearly a generational gap, and a different interpretive strategy is being used by the gaming generation. Kids these days.
If there is one scene or sequence of Hardcore Henry that is visually rewarding from beginning to end, it is the opening credits. It’s shot in slow-motion and isn’t from a POV, but from an objective observation. The color palette and music are hypnotic and thrilling, and also incredibly violent. When there’s a movie whose sole purpose is to show off how it kills people, you have to know that it’s going to be brutal and also psychologically make you uncomfortable, so as to bring forth nervous laughter. It’s a shame the rest of the film never lives up to this great moment.
Summation
Hardcore Henry gets most of the film wrong because it lacks execution. But in the fleeting beats where the action connects and the camera doesn’t shake so bad and the characters are interesting and have things to do, then it’s pretty badass. What else can you expect from a movie called Hardcore Henry?
Are you going to see Hardcore Henry in theaters or stay home and play your favorite at-the-moment first-person shooter?
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