Hardcore Henry

Rated R for non-stop bloody brutal violence and mayhem, language throughout, sexual content/nudity, and drug use. ___ It's only been five years since Henry was in theaters, and I already feel the need to retrospectively appreciate it as a throwback to the trend of the GoPro videos which YT was fed up with in their day, before they started being replaced by passive YouTubers in the quiet of their homes, and also the end of the era of big video game titles driven by the promise of technological advancement before that market shifted and games started being developed on social platforms. Here we find the usual climbing over buildings (Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge), sniper missions (Call of Duty), escaping from unknown snipers (Half-Life), augmentations (Deus Ex, even with a very blatant rip-off of the soundtrack of Human Revolution at the beginning), obstacles you can shoot through, or papers flying around during the gunfights (FEAR). Add to all that the familiar nightmare of falling somewhere you don't actually fall. Hardcore Henry is actually a fan film in the best way imaginable. It's incoherent (tied together, thankfully, by the FP format), doesn't know when to calm down, and just tosses in one idea after another, whereas it carries the film's tricky and thorough choreography all the way through with tremendous effort just for the sheer spectacle of it. Besides, despite his muteness and anonymity, the protagonist is somehow actually quite likeable, and that's only through the way he occasionally gesticulates with his hand, turns his head, and when he knocks a girl down on the stairs waits to see if she's okay, despite having a bunch of evildoers at his back. The shenanigans he comes up with during the action sequences is actually his way of expressing and building character. But I recognize that this may be because I'm a pretty die-hard gamer who would ideally live his entire alternate life somewhere in a fictional universe, and I can tune into that kind of storytelling much more easily. "Take down the proto-baby!" (04/23/2016)

The pure fire of an avid fan of decadence who pursues the ultimate physical experience with the vigor of a Soviet bulldozer. The creative stubbornness is admirable, but dramaturgically it's pretty bad because, around the 60th minute, it starts to chafe. The frantic ending, however, lifts up the video game concept (literally) into high gear (arcade jumps included) and revs into the red. It’s a progressive genre detour, but unfortunately into a dead end. (04/23/2016)

I applaud the idea, admire the technical realization, and criticize the rest. Hardcore Henry is an unimaginably slick and stylish action flick, where some of the opening scenes (especially the free fall in the escape pod) spike the level of the viewer's experience to unprecedented, and you can really say revolutionary, heights, while the optimally set runtime and a lot of black humour, brilliantly provided by the film's best character(s), the outrageously loud Sharlto Copley, are also a hit. But that's where the good stuff ends, as the frantic, B-movie sci-fi story makes no sense, we know absolutely nothing about most of the characters, including the confused Henry, and the vast majority of motives remain unexplained and unfinished. It's simply too much chaos, which can still be excused for the adrenaline-fuelled action scenes, but even pure cinematic entertainment should strive for a more meaningful or at least more atmospheric plot – we can't even worry about Henry, as he's clearly a blend of every invulnerable Hollywood hero in history. And the last criticism is directed to the final long battle, which, instead of a climactic ending, is in my eyes the weakest action set-piece of the film. I did have fun and if I weren't such an opponent of computer games I might not have objected. 65% (04/29/2016)

There was always something going on and there were so many ideas, but I still got bored, and quite a lot, unfortunately. It’s basically like the first or second Machete, nothing would have been lost if it had remained as a short. Regardless, the form is interesting and it was the only reason I stuck with it until the end. (06/25/2016)

In terms of innovation of the action genre, it’s only an appetiser, because Hardcore Henry is far from a full-fledged cinematic experience. There’s no plot and the frantic sequence of action scenes can’t disguise the feeling that this farce is merely a consumer piece with a short shelf-life. Original, technically very accomplished, but also exhausting almost to the max. And this time there was no need for a second or third part, 90 minutes of the first one was enough. (07/13/2016)