Review of The Green Hornet (2011) by Steve J — 25 May 2012

If you have ever seen a Seth Rogen comedy, then you will know what you're in store for when it comes to the humour; a harmless, funny movie. Mix this with a comic-book style story, martial arts action scenes, nice weapons and cool cars and you get The Green Hornet. Britt Reid is the son of the publisher of a successful newspaper, The Daily Sentinel and Britt is quite happy to spend his father's money on parties and drinks. However, when his father dies, he decides to change and put the money he was left to do something helpful and worthwhile. He uses the money to buy a whole load of new technology and a smart sidekick all of which will help him clean the streets of crime. First of all, if you are thinking that The Green Hornet will be the equivalent to the likes of Defendor or Kick-Ass, then you may be disappointed because this movie does not have the same quality as far as the story and the acting is concerned. The Green Hornet has a decent story that manages to keep your attention for most of the movie but there were a couple of times where it failed to be interesting enough, such as Kato and Britt's interest in Britt's new secretary. Seth Rogen and Jay Chou were great as their characters. Even if you didn't really care about what happened to their characters, the actors did prove that they were a decent comedy duo, reminding you very much of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. Cameron Diaz plays Lenore, Britt's secretary, who isn't really used in the movie a lot, even though she's supposed to be an important character. Christoph Waltz is great as Chudnofsky, the villain of the movie, and, just like Cameron Diaz's character, is quite underused in the movie even though he's supposed to be important as well. Another major flaw in the movie is the character development as it's not easy to care for the heroes of the movie when the only reason they want to fight crime is to fight their boredom.

Michel Gondry directs The Green Hornet and stays true to the classic and modern superhero movies as well as adding elements of his own, despite there being a couple of flaws. The visuals were nice to the eye and quite original, including Kato's action sequences, however there were times when the movie was impressive with its stunts but it also got a little silly at the same time, particularly towards the end. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are in charge of the writing and, although they doesn't do a bad job of writing the story, the script could have been better and the characters could have had more personality to them as well. Although The Green Hornet has some nice visuals and some decent scenes, it's something that isn't really good enough to see in the cinema but is good enough to watch on DVD.

This movie shouldn't be taken seriously as it is just a harmless, goofy, action-comedy movie. The Green Hornet works as a slapstick comedy but not as a superhero movie or even an action movie. Don't get this wrong, the action scenes are great but, apart from clips here and there, most of the action happens in the last twenty minutes or so. The Green Hornet is something that you should wait to rent on DVD rather than taking a trip to the cinema. Overall, The Green Hornet isn't too bad and it does the job in killing a couple of hours when you're bored but I wouldn't go out of my way to see this one again.