"Hardcore Henry" Review

You may remember a number of years back a pair of music videos that appeared on YouTube for a band called Biting Elbows. These two videos - "The Stampede" and "Bad Motherfucker" - were filmed from a first-person perspective and involved the main character leaping, chasing, punching and shooting his way through suited bad guys. "The Stampede" happened in an office building, and then "Bad Motherfucker" took the action all across a grungy cityscape.

After demonstrating their skills on YouTube, Russian-American filmmaker Ilya Naishuller and producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) thought it'd be a fun idea to make a feature-length action picture filmed entirely from the first-person point of view. So Naishuller strapped some GoPro Hero 3 cameras to a rig worn around one's head like a mask and set to work on Hardcore Henry.

In Hardcore Henry, the titular hero awakens with no memory as he is reassembled from bionic parts by his wife Estelle (Haley Bennett). After a warlord (Danila Kozlovsky) attacks Estelle's lab, Henry sets out to rediscover his identity and to rescue his wife before an army of bionic soldiers is unleashed on the world. Helping Henry along the way is Jimmy (Sharlto Copley, in a delightfully bonkers turn), a cripple who uses various bionic copies of himself to prepare for any situation. There's ghillie suit Jimmy, punk-rock Jimmy, RAF Jimmy, cokehead playboy Jimmy, hobo Jimmy, and secret agent Jimmy just to name a few.

The warlord Akan (Kozlovsky) throws all the bad guys he can at Henry and Jimmy (quite literally in a rooftop fight sequence set to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now"), and in the process makes for non-stop bloody mayhem as you've never seen it before this side of Call of Duty.

Endlessly exciting and deliriously unpretentious, I could never look away from Hardcore Henry. The gimmicky visuals worked. Somehow, the migraine never set in. Those especially accustomed to first-person shooter video games should be fine.

At one point during production, someone advised Naishuller that they should include a health bar and ammo HUD (heads-up display) on-screen at all times as a joke to gamers. Wisely, Naishuller declined to let the gimmick go quite that far. Hardcore Henry remains a fun, mindless little movie, and if it had included a HUD, I probably would've brought an Xbox controller to the theater. As much as companies like Microsoft want to close the gap between film, television and video games, I prefer at least a shred of differentiation.

The biggest negatives to take away here are that the story is rather weak, and character development is slim-to-none. Akan is a nasty villain, but the first-person gimmick doesn't allow us to explore his character at all. The most well-developed character is Jimmy, and it's not even his movie. The narrative doesn't answer enough of its own questions and seems content to serve as a thin excuse to string together action sequences. The ending is abrupt, yet just cynical and funny enough to be satisfying. That said, I don't think anyone will be clamoring for Hardcore Henry 2.

Those looking for an action movie that breaks the mold should find some satisfaction in Hardcore Henry. Though the plot may be thin, the first-person gimmick, breathless action sequences, and "Looney Tunes"-sense of humor make for a fun time.

B-