Hardcore Henry Review: Videogame – The Movie
(Image sourced from http://www.geeksofdoom.com/2016/02/11/hardcore-henry-official-trailer)
Do you remember when you were 15, your hormones are all over
the place and you’ve begun to upgrade your entertainment viewing from ‘kids
shows’ like the amazing 1990s Spider-Man series to more mature and adult
content. And in that search all you want is to have your mind blown by an
action extravaganza, that’s a no holds barred, insane, intense, gory experience
that grabs you by the eyeballs and doesn’t let go till its final climactic
battle of awesomeness. Now you might have found it in the odd YouTube video
where an insanely talented stuntman straps a go pro to his head and takes out a
street full of suit wearing bad guys in the most inventive ways possible; you
may have even experiance these jaw dropping feats in games you played, I’ll
never forget booting an unsuspecting crazed lunatic into a spiked wall of pain
in Bullet Storm for the first time. But now ladies and gentleman they have done
it, they have put that mind blowing, smile inducing, balls to the wall crazy experience
on the big screen in a full on feature movie. And it is beautiful.
(Video sourced from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9eZuYXgs-s)
Hardcore Henry’s story is a simple one. With the movie
completely being filmed from the perspective of Henry in first person, you are
Henry. With your memory wiped you wake up in a lab after a terrible accident and
to save you, your scientist wife has made you into a cyborg. All is well and
good till the villainous Akan crashes the party, kidnaps your wife to make an
evil army of cyborgs like you and wants to kill you. So what are you going to
do about it? Kick some major ass in the most spectacular and brutal of ways of
course.
As you can probably guess from that synopsis the story is
pretty thin, no Oscar contender for sure, but in this fil that doesn’t really
matter. The story is skilfully sprinkled in the film throughout to give you
enough motivation to really connect and empathise with Henry as he shoots,
punches and eviscerate the hordes of badguys in-front of him but mostly it
takes a back seat to allow for the action of this film to take centre stage as
if the story had taken any more control over the film than it did, the film
would have suffered. This movie’s pace is astonishing, your never left to even
consider the notion of getting bored as you are flown through the events of the
film at break neck speeds with a trail of literal fire in your wake as you experience
the pantheon of exciting, bloody and downright fantastic action.
The fact that the whole film is in first person is not only impressive
from a technical and innovative standpoint, even with the slight dizziness that
comes from being at the forefront of such high speed, bone-crushing, movement,
but putting the audience most literally in the shoes of Henry creates an immediate
and surprisingly strong connection between the films hero and the wide eyed
viewers. I really felt for Henry throughout and willed him on constantly to
smash, curb-stomp and shotgun blast his way forward to the woman he loves. This
movie got a surprisingly visceral emotional response out of me thanks to not
only the perspective but also some great scenes that tok a moment out of the
grenade scarred landscape of Henrys now world to set the ground work for some
really satisfying emotional pay off later on in yet another insane action
sequence that thanks to an earlier scene didn’t just feel like another brawl,
but a fight with some real motivation and stakes to it.
This emotional response was in part also due to the
characters of Hardcore Henry. Once again, while they pretty much all can be
seen as thin caricatures of what real people are actually like, they fit in
perfectly with the films over the top and videogamey tone and do the job they
are set out to do. Danila Kozlovsky as the films main boss Akan is your stereotypical
eccentric and at many moments disgusting villain, and that’s all he needs to
be, he is incredibly easy to hate and you are constantly willing for Henry to
exact his revenge on him, making the final ‘boss fight’ of this film feel even
more epic and involved. Haley Bennett also plays the thin part of Henry’s wife
perfectly, once again you are constantly wishing for them to be reunited,
making Henry’s quest feel even more heroic and his success even more imperative.
(Image sourced from http://www.cultofmac.com/411833/hardcore-henry-gives-first-person-view-of-movie-fighting-action/)
Now one character that upgrades from the categorisation of “thin”
is Sharlto Copley’s Jimmy. Saying too much about his character would be a
spoiler but his character is definitely given more dimensions than the rest to
play with and Copley does a fantastic job with it. This part is just pure fun
and you can tell Copley is taking full advantage of how absurd it is which
makes spending time with this very ‘layered’ character a blast.
But seriously, the action of this film is mind blowing. The brutal
and jaw dropping moments of this film cannot be understated and the ability to
keep up such a furious and unforgiving pace of impressive and heart pounding
action is to be commended. You won’t be able to take your eyes of the screen
because if you even glance away you will have missed another in a long line of
sensational and freakin’ insane action moments. This movie never feels ‘samey’, each new action
sequence is fresh and has a new insane spin on it. When ripping through a van
on a machine-gun mounted motorbike is a cliff note of one of the middle action
scenes, you know you’re going to be in for a bloody good time, the level of
insane mounts and mounts until you just can’t believe what you were just
allowed to witness.
But outside of the teenage part of brain that won’t stop
screaming how FU*^ING COOL this movie was, how these moments of pure action
were put on screen is also really impressive and should be mentioned. The practical
effects of the film are astounding and I have no idea how they pulled it off. The
many stuntmen who dawned the head-camera mount must be superhuman because the
physical feats that are showcased in this film are simply amazing and I have no
idea how a human could even do most the stuff that is put on screen, never mind
the environmental feats of this films very explosive temper.
(Image sourced from http://collider.com/hardcore-henry-trailer-sharlto-copley/)
But obviously some of the eye popping sequences in this film wouldn’t
be possible at al so need the slight enhancement of CGI and it’s use in this
film is mostly undetectable, bar one glaringly bad scene that was more than
made up for in the incredible action sequence to follow it, which is impressive
for such a low budget movie.
Within the action scenes, and in fact the whole movie, the
editing is expertly crafted so you almost never see the seams of how this film
was put together. Being in first person all the time makes it abit hard to cut
away from a scene to the next without making it a jarring experience for the
audience. But this film somehow uses the natural movement and momentum it gains
throughout to fuel the well placed cuts s you never feel lost or confused and
the unstoppable pace is never allowed to falter or stumble.
Where the editing also shines is in the films use of music. Not
only do abrupt cuts and amazing cues heighten and in some cases make a sequence
the enthralling experience it is but the choice of songs themselves is
fantastic. The songs are appropriately fast paced and get you incredibly pumped
for the combat ahead. In-fact the music selection is so good one song choice
literally had me laughing out loud with glee at what was about to take place on
its opening notes and will forever be imprinted in my mind as one of the best
lead up and epic fights in film history.
So in conclusion, if you’re a fan of action in any way, shape
or form and are fine with everything that comes with an 18 rating, then you owe
it to yourself to see this film. Its action mind blowing in all the right ways,
brutal, bloody, insane and heart pounding. The film rapidly cranks up to 11 and
never comes back down and I love it.
Hardcore Henry = 9/10
Why not check out my YouTube channel, BurtonReviews, where I
upload awesome gaming montages put to badass songs or scores every Sunday.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!
Comments
Post a Comment