Hardcore Henry (2016) review

(Note: The following is a full review of one of the films that I had previously covered in my ‘2016 SXSW Film Festival Recap’ post. For a quick refresher on what I said in that post, click Here. But for now, here’s my full review of the first-person action film, Hardcore Henry.)

Hardcore Henry is a particularly unique entry into the action genre. The brainchild of director Ilya Naishuller, the frontman of Russian indie rock group Biting Elbows, and inspired by the band’s music videos for their songs ‘The Stampede’ and ‘Bad Mother******’, both of which were shot in a similar manner, Hardcore Henry is a 100% first-person action film. All of the action in this film is witnessed, and in this case mostly committed, from the perspective of the titular Henry, effectively placing the audience in the middle of it all. In other words, you know all of those first-person shooter games like Call of Duty and Battlefield? Well this is like playing those games… while on crack. Yes, Hardcore Henry is very much a film that lives up to its ‘Hardcore’ title with its balls-to-the-wall action and its extremely hyperactive pacing. However, I wouldn’t necessarily say that this is a good thing. I mean, sure, I will give the filmmakers credit for at least sticking to their guns and delivering us a no-holds barred action extravaganza. And again, at the very least this film can at least lay claim to the fact that it’s a pretty darn original entry in the action genre in terms of its overall style. However, this ends up being one of the most extreme cases of style over substance as the story and characters are basically just an afterthought in favor of endless action. Sure the action may be impressive for a film shot in this style but it really doesn’t matter if everything else is woefully underdeveloped.

As the film begins, the audience is placed into the perspective of Henry, a man who wakes up in a laboratory being given cybernetic limbs by his scientist wife Estelle (Haley Bennett). Estelle tells Henry that he has recently been in an accident, hence the loss of his limbs, and that he also has amnesia. However, before Estelle and the other scientists can install a speech module for Henry, they are suddenly attacked by mercenaries led by the mysterious telekinetic Akan (Danila Kozlovsky). Henry and Estelle escape from the airship that the laboratory is located in but when they land back on Earth in the middle of Moscow, more of Akan’s mercenaries come and abduct Estelle. Henry is soon rescued by a mysterious man named Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), who offers to help him take on Akan and his army in order to save Estelle. The only problem? Henry’s battery is running low on energy and at best he’s only got enough energy to last for about 20-30 minutes. This results in Henry embarking on a journey throughout Moscow as he fights through dozens of bad guys, with the help of Jimmy and a few other people as well, in order to not only ‘stay alive’ but to also rescue Estelle and to stop Akan once and for all before he can create a whole army of soldiers who are just like Henry and unleash them upon the world.

As I said before, this film does at least deserve credit for trying something new in the action genre. I mean, I can’t really think of any other action film that has been done from a first-person perspective. With that in mind, this film does go all the way with it and in that regard, it very much succeeds in making you feel like you’re Henry and you’re fighting all of these bad guys like a total badass. Not only that, but the film definitely does have some really impressive and cool action sequences, like a fight scene near the end of the film in which Henry fights a whole slew of henchmen that’s set perfectly to Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. But even with all of that said, at the end of the day this style may prove to get old for some people after a while. That’s because the film does sort of stay on the same note throughout its runtime to the point where it actually gets rather repetitive at times. That and it should be noted that the film’s first-person style, which is ‘sort of’ similar to the found-footage style seen in films like Cloverfield and Chronicle (though to be perfectly clear, this is NOT a ‘found-footage’ film), could be very nauseating to watch for some viewers. I’m not someone who’s easily prone to nausea but I will admit that when I saw it at SXSW, I had to walk out of the theater after it was done because it was so intense. This film, and subsequently the action, goes by so fast that it actually kind of requires a second viewing of it just to notice everything that happens in it. The only question, though, is whether or not you’d care to watch it again.

Because where this film may shine in regards to its action, it severely lacks in terms of its plot and characters. To put it simply, this is easily one of the most mindless action films that I’ve ever seen. Because the action is so frenetic, we as an audience are never given much time to take a breather because this film keeps on going and going like the Energizer Bunny… on crack. And as a result, most of the characters are incredibly underdeveloped. For one thing, the main villain Akan is apparently a Jedi because of his telekinetic powers. How did he gain these powers? It’s never explained… well, at least not in the film. There’s a prequel comic focused on Akan, which covers his backstory, that was given out for free when I saw the film at SXSW… but I haven’t read it yet and to be frank, that stuff should’ve just been in the film. However, I will at least give Danila Kozlovsky credit because he actually does make Akan a pretty fiendish and even rather charismatic villain despite having jack to work with. Ultimately though, the real star of the show is Sharlto Copley as Jimmy, who to be perfectly frank is the only major character in this film who gets any shred of character development… and even then, his main role in the film is mostly just telling Henry where to go. Without giving too much away, a recurring plot-point in the film is that Jimmy is continuously killed but yet somehow keeps coming back albeit with different personalities each time, from a coked-up sex addict to a ‘peace-loving’ motorcycle riding hippie to my personal favorite, a World War II admiral who looks and sounds like he came straight out of Inglourious Basterds (“Jolly Good!”).

Fans of the action genre will probably get a kick out of this film and rightfully so as it does deliver a pretty distinctively original action style that could potentially be used in the future by other filmmakers if they ever decide to use it. But if they ever do, hopefully those filmmakers come up with a much stronger story to go along with it because this film doesn’t do that at all. The film’s non-stop nature means that there’s little-to-no-time for any sort of breather and as a result, none of the characters, aside from Sharlto Copley’s Jimmy, are ever fleshed out. We as an audience are basically just stepping into the shoes of a blank slate. And as impressive as the action may be at times, the fact that it’s all-shot in first person will be nauseating for some people and it may even eventually tire them out because it does get rather repetitive after a while. Again, I will give the film credit for being unapologetically, for lack of a better term, ‘hardcore’ and all but it’s so ‘hardcore’ that it becomes quite erratic at times. Now I’ve seen arguments that this film doesn’t really need a deep story due to its action and overall sense of adrenaline. But that same argument was made towards Mad Max Fury Road and after seeing this film, I will never be as critical towards Fury Road in regards to its writing ever again because at least that film had a plot and characters that were actually worth a damn. This is just action and violence for the sake of action and violence.  

Rating: 2.5/5

Chappie (2015) review

South African director Neill Blomkamp made quite a first impression with his feature-length directorial debut, 2009’s ‘District 9’. What was at first just a $30 million sci-fi film with a relatively unknown cast ended up becoming the ‘sleeper hit’ of that year, grossing over $200 million worldwide and earning four Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. This effectively made Blomkamp, who had previously been chosen by Peter Jackson to direct a ‘Halo’ film that sadly never came to fruition, one of the hottest new directors at the time. However his immediate follow-up, 2013’s ‘Elysium’, ended up being a bit of a disappointment for most point, to the point where even Blomkamp himself has recently admitted that he sort of ‘f****d it up’. Now he’s back with his third film, ‘Chappie’ which, like ‘District 9’, is inspired by one of Blomkamp’s previous short films, in this case 2003’s ‘Tetra Vaal’. But considering the current consensus towards this film (30% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time I’m writing this), it’s looking like some people are now going to wonder if Blomkamp was just a ‘one-hit wonder’ director. Well, after seeing the film I actually have to disagree with that notion. As someone who hasn’t yet seen ‘District 9’, I was mildly entertained by ‘Elysium’ despite the fact that there wasn’t much about it that really stood out. ‘Chappie’, on the other hand, is actually quite entertaining. It may have some flaws in regards to the story but surprisingly it was actually a really engaging sci-fi film. If anything, I think it’s better than ‘Elysium’.

In the year 2016, the government of South Africa deploys a series of semi-A.I. programmed attack robots to use as a police force in order to deal with the city of Johannesburg’s overly high crime rate. While the robots do prove to be a success, their creator Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), an employee at the weapons manufacturing company that builds them, creates a new A.I. program that is able to think and feel. Despite resistance from both his boss Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) and rival engineer Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), the latter of whom has developed a different robot design controlled by humans instead of A.I., Deon steals one of the police robots so that he could test out his new software. However, he is then almost immediately kidnapped by a group of gangsters, Ninja and Yolandi (played by Watkin Tudor Jones (‘Ninja’) and Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord), who want to use the robot to assist them in a heist so that they can pay off a debt to another gangster. Deon ends up installing his new program for them, resulting in a new A.I. system for the robot (portrayed through motion-capture by Sharlto Copley), who Yolandi names ‘Chappie’. As time goes on, Chappie does begin to develop human intelligence and emotions, all the while Ninja tries to toughen him up so that he can help them on their planned heist. But soon they all have to deal with the consequences that occur as a result of Deon’s actions against his company.

It’s clear that Blomkamp is a director that really does bring some unique concepts to his sci-fi films. In the case of ‘Chappie’, it’s all based around the idea of smart A.I. and the possibilities, good and bad, which can come from it. While it’s not really a social commentary like either ‘District 9’ or ‘Elysium’ were, it still offers an interesting take on this whole concept. Now with that said, the writing can be a bit of a mess at times, sometimes favoring action over story and character development. I mean at the end of the day, Chappie is really the only major character in this who gets any major development; everyone else is either flat or under-developed. However, I was actually surprised to find that I was really invested in the film. Both the visuals and the action sequences are pretty good and the film is backed by a really solid score from Hans Zimmer. Story-wise, despite the occasional shortcoming in regards to the writing, I still found the film to be very engaging, mainly because of the character of Chappie. I thought it was a pretty cool idea to have a more adult version of ‘Short Circuit’ but one where the main robot character actually learns about the world from bad influences while still maintaining a pretty likable persona that stems from his child-like innocence.

Clearly taking some inspiration from Andy Serkis, Sharlto Copley’s motion-capture work here as Chappie is quite phenomenal. Not only that, but he does a fantastic job in capturing Chappie’s initial innocence and naivety and then subsequent evolution into a ‘gangsta’. A key scene early on where Chappie gets into a troubling situation in a bad neighborhood actually resulted in me feeling legitimately sorry for him. As for the rest of the cast, while they don’t get as much to work with as Copley, a lot of them still do fine enough work here. Dev Patel is good in the role of Chappie’s ‘maker’ as is Hugh Jackman, as usual, even though his role as the film’s ‘villain’ is rather underdeveloped. As for Sigourney Weaver, she also does a good job though she really needs to find roles that don’t have her only appearing in a few scenes that results in her character contributing little to the actual plot, just like what happened last year with her role in ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’. Oh yeah, and Die Antwoord is also in this as well. Now I had never really known anything about them before seeing this movie and with that said, it is rather weird to be watching these two appear in this movie, in which they basically play themselves. Quite frankly it’s the strangest ‘cross-promotion’ I’ve ever seen. I won’t really say that their work in this is ‘good’, heck early on Ninja comes off as being a major a-hole (and I’ve heard that apparently he was a pain in the ass for Blomkamp to work with on set), but they do serviceable enough jobs here. Still, I think it would’ve been better to get other actors to play these roles.

I was legitimately surprised by how much I actually did like ‘Chappie’, especially given the fact that I’ve never seen ‘District 9’, admittedly wasn’t the biggest fan of ‘Elysium’, and went into this not knowing what to expect given the mediocre reviews it has been getting. But in the end, if anything, it seriously isn’t as bad as some people are putting it out to be. It’s clear that Blomkamp is a great visual director who does bring unique ideas to the films that he makes. Both of these qualities are definitely on display here. His only problem at the moment, though, is that he really does need to work on his writing because ‘Chappie’ does fall flat at times, mainly due to some lackluster character development for any character that is not named Chappie. But at the same time, Chappie is a fairly compelling main character and Sharlto Copley’s mo-cap performance here is superb. In short, the film was actually pretty dang entertaining and I did like it more than ‘Elysium’. I don’t believe that Blomkamp is a ‘one-hit wonder’ as I’m sure a lot of people will begin to think following this film (again, haven’t seen ‘District 9’). I’m excited to see what he brings to that ‘Alien’ film he’s working on next, which he got as a result of sharing some of the concept art he made for it. Heck, maybe now Sigourney Weaver can actually get a role where she’s not only in the film for a few scenes. Though as evident from his last two films, I think it’s safe to say that he should bring in another writer who can help him strengthen up his writing.

Rating: 4/5

Maleficent (2014) review

In 1959, Disney released their 16^th feature-length animated film, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, based on the 1697 fairytale ‘La Belle au bois dormant’ by Charles Perrault, which was later adapted by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 as ‘Little Briar Rose’. While the film received generally mixed reviews at the time of its release and it also performed rather disappointingly at the box office, it has since become a Disney classic and one of the greatest elements of the entire film was its main villain, Maleficent. Easily one of Disney’s finest villains, Maleficent was graceful and elegant, but also incredibly sinister at the same time, even if her motivations in the film were rather questionable, being that she was ‘offended’ at not getting an invitation to Princess Aurora’s christening. Still, she was a great villain and now with this new film ‘Maleficent’ we get to see her side of the story because this basically is the live-action version of the story but told from Maleficent’s point of view. Because of this, this film offers quite a different take on the story than one might expect, but overall it does offer an intriguing new look on the story ‘we thought we knew’ and of course is headlined by the terrific performance by the perfectly cast Angelina Jolie as the ‘Mistress of All Evil’.

Before she became known as the ‘Mistress of All Evil’, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) was once a young fairy who lived in a magical realm known as the Moors, which bordered a human kingdom. One day, she meets and befriends a peasant boy named Stefan and eventually they fall in love. However years later, when Stefan (Sharlto Copley) returns to her after having not seen her for a long time, he ends up betraying her by cutting off her wings so that he can become king. Heartbroken and outraged, Maleficent enacts revenge on Stefan on the day of his daughter Aurora’s christening. Maleficent curses the infant child proclaiming that on her 16^th birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a sleep-like death, and can only be awakened by true love’s kiss. In the hopes that this curse can be avoided, Stefan has Aurora sent away from the kingdom to live in hiding with three pixies (Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple) until the day after her 16^th birthday. But as Aurora (Elle Fanning) starts to grow up, Maleficent, who ends up taking care of her more than the pixies do, begins to grow more attached to her, resulting in her trying to find a way to remove the curse from Aurora before it’s too late.

Now if you’re coming into this expecting Maleficent to be the bad guy, you’re probably going to be rather disappointed because it’s more like ‘Wicked’ in that she’s the protagonist in this. Sure she does curse Aurora with the sleeping curse and for a little while early on she doesn’t like her that much, but for most of the movie she’s just a misunderstood character who was betrayed by King Stefan, the real main antagonist of the film, which ends up leading her on a path of revenge. But she soon starts to care more for Aurora, whose cheerful persona starts to change Maleficent’s outlook on humans. Overall, the relationship between the two, which is sort of like a ‘mother-daughter’ relationship, is the best part, and ultimately the heart, of the movie. The movie also benefits from some pretty excellent visuals, which is not that surprising seeing how this was directed by someone who’s been a production designer, which help immerse us in this film’s universe. Plus, at just 97 minutes, making it the shortest of Disney’s recent live-action fairytales, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome and never drags at any point.   

As it’s been well documented by pretty much everyone who’s seen this movie, Angelina Jolie does a fantastic job as Maleficent. She looks the part, acts the part, and was just a perfect choice to portray the character. She’s so good here that… well, she admittedly overshadows everyone else in the film. Now I’m not saying that the rest of the cast is bad; it’s just that this movie really belongs to Jolie and the fact is that Maleficent is focused on the most here more than anyone else. While Aurora is just your average ‘nice’ princess (Prince Phillip (Brenton Thwaites) is really just serving as a cameo here), if I remember correctly she wasn’t the most compelling lead in the original animated film either. Still, Elle Fanning does do a very good job with the rather limited material she has to work with but as I stated earlier, the relationship between her and Jolie in this movie is really top-notch. Sharlto Copley also doesn’t really have as much to work with as Stefan but he also does a pretty good job here as well. However, the three pixies here do get rather annoying at times, not in their performances but how they are portrayed in this. I haven’t seen the original ‘Sleeping Beauty’ film in quite some time, but I don’t recall the three fairies in that film being as incompetent as these three are. It’s clearly shown that Maleficent is a far better caretaker of Aurora than them. I really don’t know what went wrong in the translation from animation to live-action, but here they’re more like the Three Stooges.

When it comes to Disney’s recent big-budget live-action fairytales, I find that I like ‘Maleficent’ more than ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and almost as I much as I liked ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’. At the end of the day, ‘Maleficent’ turns out to be a pretty good film. Director Robert Stromberg, who has been mostly known for his work as a fantastic production designer on films like ‘Avatar’ as well as the previously mentioned ‘Alice’ and ‘Oz’, makes a pretty good first debut with this film and a lot of that is because of the brilliant performance by Angelina Jolie as Maleficent. Sure, she’s not the bad guy in this, which I’m guessing will be rather disappointing for some people, but her relationship with Aurora in this film certainly makes up for it. And while Jolie does overshadow everyone else in the film, they all do a pretty fine job even if they don’t have as much to work with. Plus, the film has really nice visuals and doesn’t really drag at any point seeing how it is much shorter than both ‘Oz’ and ‘Alice’. So overall, if you’re okay with the fact that this film’s Maleficent isn’t the main villain, then I do recommend this movie because I don’t think that having Maleficent be the protagonist in this betrays who the character was in the original film. It’s just a very interesting new take on the story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ from her perspective.

Rating: 4/5