Review of Hardcore Henry (2015) by Jt F — 09 Apr 2016

Hardcore Henry fancies itself an immersive experience. Director Ilya Naishuller, frontman for Russian rock band Biting Elbows, shot the entire movie on a GoPro camera attached to various different stuntmen (no actor plays Henry), presumably so the audience could project themselves into Henry's shoes and live out their own high-octane shoot-'em-up fantasies. Watching the film, however, feels more like watching a coked-up 12-year-old play a bottom shelf first-person shooter video game with no discernible objectives.

After a pointless prologue where Tim Roth scares away some bullies and calls the GoPro a "little pussy," Henry/the player awakens in a test tube with no memories. An attractive female scientist, his wife (Haley Bennett), informs him he's been in a terrible accident. Then, there's a tutorial mode where Henry learns how to function with robotic limbs. Then, things happen and Henry has to go places and kill people to save his wife from a blonde-haired, telekinetic Tommy Wiseau sound-alike (Danila Kozlovsky), the game- sorry- movie's main bad guy. And that's literally it. There's no story- just a grotesque celebration of violence from a first-person perspective. There's no character development- just background noise catalyzing and sustaining Henry's bloody rampage across Moscow.

The promotional material for Hardcore Henry praised it as some kind of game-changing marriage of Call of Duty and Captain America, and in a turn of events that should surprise nobody, that turned out to be a complete joke. Naishuller aims no higher than showing extreme violence through the lens of a live-action video game. It's not like he makes an attempt at character development but does it poorly- he doesn't try at all. Why, then, is Hardcore Henry any longer than a neat five-minute YouTube video about a guy running around killing people in a series of well-executed first-person POV stunts? Oh, right. Naishuller already did that in his short video, Bad Motherf***er, which he directed for his band.

Just like the aforementioned short video, Hardcore Henry boasts impressive stunt work and a neat concept. Certain scenes benefit from a minuscule dash of tension despite involving null characters. Naishuller has a certain proclivity for constructing a threatening environment where anybody could be seconds away from getting shot or exploded, and it's enough to keep audiences on their toes as well as entertained by the comic level of gore if nothing else. It's just difficult to recommend this movie based solely on those merits when you could recreate the same experience just by watching any YouTuber play Black Ops.