Review of Hardcore Henry (2015) by Matt C — 22 Jun 2016

Hardcore Henry is one of the most teenage boy-aimed movies that I've ever seen. It's not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I can't think of another movie that felt like such a fever dream of a twelve-year-old boy with ADHD that says "fuck bitches, get money," and calls things "MLG" in an unironic fashion.

When you have a movie that's 96 minutes long and entirely filmed from the perspective of its protagonist, you've really got to have something to level out the insanity. Hardcore Henry works pretty well for the first 40 minutes or so, but after that, its fun and engrossing gimmick soon turns into a repetitive, low-stakes, adolescent ADHD wet dream.

Pack your Dramamine, bitches. The movie is about a guy shooting people. Okay, so actually, the movie is about the titular character waking up after some sort of accident with no memory of who he is or his life, and after being turned into a semi-cyborg by his sexy blonde scientist wife, some megalomaniacal CEO (who's basically Julian Assange) tries to take over the world or something, and then stuff blows up.

A lot. I would say that I would fit into this movie's demographic to an extent, being a 19-year-old male. I'm not a massive fan of first-person shooters, but I certainly appreciate them and understand the appeal.

If you don't think that you'll like this movie based on the synopsis and trailer, then you won't. That's the end of that. But if you think that you may like it or were intrigued like I was, it's kind of a crapshoot regarding whether or not you'll be a fan.

I was into this movie for the first half thanks to its humor, fast pace, and effective utilization of its first-person cinematography. The style takes about five or ten minutes to get into, but there are some pretty sweet foot chases and parkour sequences that didn't make me feel sick or anything.

Sharlto Copley is the typical video game sidekick helper character, and he's pretty great playing multiple roles ranging from an alcoholic Russian to a cocaine-addicted playboy to a stoned hippie-biker, among more.

The issue is that this can only carry a movie for so long, and when the interest wanes, the movie completely dies. Again, this movie is only 96 minutes including credits, but it feels like it's far past two hours.

The movie was inspired by a music video that writer/director Ilya Naishuller made for his band a few years back, and Hardcore Henry feels like a series of music videos. It's a series of thinly connected action set pieces set to some sort of popular music with brief breathing room in between them.

The story doesn't matter at all and is insanely underdeveloped, and while that didn't bother me for the first half when I was enjoying it, that crucial flaw took a massive toll on the movie later on.

Part of it has to do with the structure--there's essentially no first act, so act three doesn't matter--and part of it has to do with the characters. The gimmick is that the main character is you, so Henry is a total blank slate, and he doesn't even have any solid relationships to build his characterization upon.

His wife is a typical damsel in distress that doesn't really do anything, and the villain is really weak. Another issue is that while some of the humor works for a bit, it becomes apparent that Hardcore Henry is actually pretty misogynistic, with all female characters being victims, liars, prostitutes, strippers, or broadly drawn sexpots.

In the end credits, female characters are billed as "Katya the Dominatrix", "Escalator face plant girl", "Ella the Whore", "Angry Prostitute", "Girl in Brothel #1-29", and "Rape victim".

This would be kind of funny is it weren't so spot-on, and it entirely encapsulates what the women in the movie are. There are also a few jabs at gay men. I wasn't so much offended as I was taken aback by how lazy it was, and it feels cheap at times; it was shot on GoPros with fisheye lenses, and that combined with the bad CG fire and blood is distracting.

Hardcore Henry is fun in theory and entertaining for a while, but even if you are a male millennial that's into video games, there's a strong possibility that you'll have fun for a bit before becoming really bored.

As the action supposedly becomes more and more intense and urgent, the action becomes more dizzying and the camera feels more and more like an iPhone strapped to the face of someone having the worst seizure ever.

It's more of a stretched-out demo reel than a movie, and even with some fun moments and great work from Sharlto Copley, this ends up being less than the sum of its parts--and it doesn't even have that many moving parts to begin with.

4.5/10, pretty bad, two thumbs down, below average, etc.