Hardcore Henry is banking on a video game word of mouth for its success. The movie projects the fun of a first-person shooter video game onto a movie screen, hopefully recreating the fun of watching a friend playing a video game. Hardcore Henry is pretty fun and delivers the goods on the action front, but because it adheres to closely to video game rules, the movie shortchanges plot points in favor of an escalating boss level of difficulty and adrenaline power ups.
Henry is you, since the movie is shot from the audience’s point of view. You are a cyborg, given artificial limbs by your wife Estelle (Haley Bennett). Almost immediately, Estelle and you get captured by Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), the big boss with telekinetic powers. You manage to get out; to try to get your wife back, you are helped by Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), who keeps showing up in new disguises at random times to get you back to your main squeeze.
Hardcore Henry’s success will live or die by how much you are into its first person shooter gimmick. For me it was pretty hit or miss. Let’s start with the good: the action stuff got progressively cooler as the movie/levels got more elaborate, in particular a car/motorcycle chase and a rooftop battle. Hardcore Henry’s sequences up the ante again and again, with just some crazy stuff in the final sequence and a strong ending. Also, the special effects stuff is really fun in that it just exists, like telekinesis or virtual reality use. Sharlto Copley and Danila Kozlovsky get to do some really fun, weird, and creepy stuff including song and dance numbers with Hardcore Henry’s technology. If you just run with it, the movie can be a violent romp for ya.
Ok, the bad: the first person camera is as shaky as any film I have seen. On more than one sequence, I had to close my eyes because my stomach was acting up a little. For those of you who get sick from shaky cams: do NOT see this movie. While the action sequences do get cooler as they go on, there is still a lot of quick cutting, meaning we do not know where we are most of the time, until all of a sudden Henry wakes up in a different location. In addition, the plot really doesn’t make any sense if you think about it at all, particularly the third act, where Henry’s confrontation with Akan had no possibility of ending the way it did because of the movie’s setup. The direction was so focused on the camera, that plot and character were pushed to the background, a surefire way to produce meh’s from the audience.
I thought Hardcore Henry could have been a game changer. The first person camera at least gave me pause as to the possibilities of the merger of film and video game. Instead, Hardcore Henry is a kinda cool action movie, that will end up being just another video game movie that sorta works, sorta doesn’t. Hey, at least it’s not Super Mario Brothers *shudder*.