Hardcore Henry

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Hardcore Henry_360P

'Hardcore' is the riveting story of a newly-made cyborg who must save his wife from evil tyrants and...wait a minute. Who cares?? The whole movie is a blast!! Ilya Naishuller is a young director who had a very cool idea to shoot an action film from a first-person perspective using a GoPro Hero3 Black Edition camera. The proof of concept was released as "Biting Elbows: Bad Motherf***er". It was pitched publicly and helped to successfully crowd-fund the feature, 'Hardcore'. It's better to keep this short and sweet: the film is extraordinarily violent; not for the squeamish. It has plenty of action, free-running, stunts, and plenty of room for comedic elements. Even the opening titles give you a taste of what's to come! Sharlto Copley (District 9, and other Neill Blomkamp projects) plays the main POV's assistant throughout the film. Copley definitely gives a range of character performances and is quality. Wearing many hats, he guides you along as if you were needing assistance in a video game, which, by the way, this film makes several references to. In particular, the Chernobyl level in Call of Duty 4 with Capt. MacMillian. Even the opening scenes are reminiscent of Half-Life, and a lot of the free-running scenes are inspired by Mirror's Edge. For those who are wondering, no. You likely won't get dizzy watching a 90-minute action film from an FP perspective. Well, maybe you shouldn't sit in the front row. Otherwise, you will have a blast. 'Hardcore' is an all-around fun time. Just be okay with the violence. It's only 90 minutes of your time that you'll likely want to experience over and over again. Or, you'll just want to plug in a play a few games. Either way, it's bloody fun!

Half human and half machine, Henry wakes only to witness the kidnapping of his wife Estelle, by a group of mercenaries. From this moment onward Henry searches and fights for Estelle with every ounce of energy he possesses. He kills and risks being killed himself, by every weapon imaginable. The viewer, through the use of a special camera attached to someone's head, is about as face to face with the violence as anyone can get. Each move that is made by Henry is followed by the viewer. Every throat that is cut seems as if it is done by our own hands. We figure out what is happening only in so much as Henry does, for both viewer and character are in the same shoes. The film is kinetic, bloody and non-stop action. While worn down by the shaky camera work and bad acting, I also appreciated all the zany twists, gore, rawness and laughs to the story. Ann of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie the film is not, and this is usually a good thing. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015.

"Hardcore Henry" is exactly what the trailers promised:a First Person Shooter on the big screen. If you're that sort of gamer, I'm sure this is candy - but it never gets beyond that gimmick to tell a good story. The camera-work is good for driving scenes. But for fistfights, running and parkour? Hell, no! I'm not rating this movie because it's not like I didn't know what was in store going in. Mildly curious, sure, but it has FPS written all over it from the start. Even so, I doubt I'll ever see this again. Here's a much better way to describe it. You know those Let's Play videos on YouTube? This is *exactly* like that. You're watching a video game that someone else is playing. Where's the appeal in that?

wow tried to watch this thing, it's awful. The script might as well be written by a game designer. It's so horrible. This is suppose to be a movie, we expect better writing at this level. The camera work is awful. Can we say way to shaky. Half the shots look like a bad video game replay where the person is looking at the ground and you can't see what the hell is going on. They cut off people's face, who looks at people directly in the chest??? No one. Just all in all, a really really bad movie. 3 for acting, 3 for script, 3 for camera work while the production quality is decent it simply doesn't make up for the rest. 3/10 don't waste your time.

This film tells the story of a man who is resurrected from the dead by technology. He is a hybrid of man and technology, and is trained to kill efficiently. There is a lot of buzz around "Hardcore Henry" being the first film to be filmed in a first person perspective. To me, the film looks more like a video game, because Henry is moves so fast and is so good at killing. People around him just die so easily. Scenes move very quickly from one to another, and the location of the story moves very quickly as well. One second he is on the roof and then the next second he is in a car. I can hardly keep up with the pace and the story! Towards the end, I felt dizzy from all the constant motion, and I was lost by the plot. At least, it was cool to have watched Henry doing daredevil jumps from one floor to another as if he was walking on grass.

Holy freakin' hell! HARDCORE HENRY is insane! What a rock 'em sock 'em experience for us action fans! A full on first person shooter movie where you get to look trough the eyes of the hero. There's firepower, there's parkour, there's sex, blood, drugs, and rock n' roll, HARDCORE HENRY is brutal through and through and you can't get enough. It's a Russian film featuring familiar faces like Sharlto Copley, Tim Roth, and the beautiful rising star, Haley Bennett. During the movie, so much is going on, you may have some difficulties collecting the pieces together but those of us sci-fi fans will soon realize that the concept is quite familiar. Henry is part man, part robot, resurrected from death with no memory, he eventually learns that he's part of bio-engineering soldiers led by a vicious warlord. And the only person who can help him is this group of avatars designed by a master scientist/engineer. Clearly, writer/director Ilya Naishuller and co-writer Will Stewart are very specific as to which audience they're targeting with this film: gamers and those of us who are fascinated with that world. Obviously the true stars of this film are the camera work and VFX, it gets you badly wanting to purchase the Blu-Ray/DVD whenever it comes out just so you can see the featurette on how the production was done. Ilya did give us that Biting Elbows' viral POV music video, and so take that and turn up the amp to 11, and you get HARDCORE HENRY. I had my doubts at first, I mean the trailer looked awesome, an entire movie done POV-stye, who wouldn't want to watch that out of plain curiosity! But my concern was that the film would feel like you're just watching a GoPro video instead of something that's cinematic, another concern was that if a few minutes of the first "Cloverfield" already had my head go dizzy, what would 96 minutes of "Hardcore Henry" do to me?! But turns out, I had a blast. HARDCORE HENRY lives up to its title, it's hardcore, it's fun, and it's more than just a roller coast ride, it's like drag-racing. I think whether or not this method is as immersive as a 3D or a IMAX experience, can always be argued, but you can definitely file this under the category unique. I read a critic somewhere said that HARDCORE HENRY reminds him much of "The Raid," and ya know what, he's on point there, our protagonist in this film constantly battling so many villains, all at once, scene after scene, halfway through you start to wonder how and from where on earth do these villains keep on coming, they constantly pop out of nowhere, but then again, that goes towards the fact that most first person shooter video games out there are done in this exact manner where you keep finding yourself having to fight and shoot your way out, non-stop. Is this the future of cinema, is this as virtual reality as it gets for us without our having to wear those big oculus rift gears? Who knows, but it sure works for HARDCORE HENRY.

"Hardcore Henry" is a numbing, unrelenting assault on the senses. It's extremely well-directed: the concept of exclusively first-person POV camera-work is carried out flawlessly. But the script will offend even viewers with single-digit IQs. The film is as stupid, repetitive and mindless as....well, a bad video game. It is also grotesquely violent. The action is non-stop, but utterly suspenseless; Henry is virtually indestructible, so there is no sense of danger or physical impact to any of his adventures. The climactic fight, where he single-handedly defeats dozens of superior robot-soldiers, hits a new low in stupidity, tastelessness, and simply not knowing when to quit. But I will give Naishuller credit for two clever winks at the audience: the poster of "The Lady In The Lake" on a wall, and the music from "The Magnificent Seven" in a scene with a horse. Despite the ultraviolence, it's only in rare moments such as these that the movie seems to be targeting adult viewers. * out of 4.

Hardcore Henry isn't really that hardcore. From a first person shooter standpoint that is derived from plenty of video games, you get to experience that POV with live actors and in a nutshell, it's over-hyped and pedestrian in the killings. I found that my senses were becoming numb with the onslaught of slaughter. At some point, you want to find any redemption in the character as there is none since he never speaks throughout the entire run of the film. I assume that was purposely done in order for the teens in the audience to be the shooter in this instance. For those of us who aren't teens, this was just buckets of blood and bullets and mild gore. The slaughter wasn't particularly fascinating and the club scene nudity was Meh! You never get that roller coaster feeling when its wall to wall bashing skulls and blowing out somebody's brain. The single plot element seriously missed a lot.