This is effectively a movie in which you are the star—a first-person perspective film seen through the eyes (as opposed to the camera, as with found-footage movies) of the lead character. In this case, you’re Henry, brought back from the dead with no memory of what happened to him/you. He does remember that his wife Estelle (Haley Bennett) was kidnapped by an nasty piece of work named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), owner of a private army of killers who never seem to stop trying to murder your ass. And this is all done while you jump, leap, shoot, get thrown from moving vehicles, flip, and any matter of action moves that are almost sure to make your stomach do flips, especially if you’re sitting too close to the screen.
HARDCORE HENRY is certain something of a unique experience, which is both good and bad. Produced by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (WANTED, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) and written & directed by musician and first-time helmer Ilya Naishuller, Henry is pure kinetic energy released onto the screen in a flurry of activity that makes anything resembling a plot difficult to follow. It’s an excuse to capture the visuals of a first-person video game on the big screen. As far as that ambition goes, the mission is accomplished. I love that when Henry leaps over something, we often catch a glimpse of his feet or hands. The camera doesn’t stay pointing straight ahead; Henry looks up and down, responding to stimuli all around him. It feels like we’re in someone’s head, looking at the world around us, in this case, in and around Moscow. It’s sometimes unnerving, occasionally sickening, but never boring.
To add an extra layer of insanity to the mix, Henry’s most seemingly reliable ally is Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), a British agent of some sort who has the unique ability to send his consciousness from body to body (somehow maintaining the same face, but different personalities). Copley really gets to let loose playing multiple characters, all of whom look strangely similar to him. Although he has no memory, Henry does have strange flashes to his childhood and his father (Tim Roth) teaching him life lessons that make about as much sense as the rest of the film.
The stunts and action sequences in HARDCORE HENRY (some done with CG) are remarkable indeed, and I’m guessing some of them might not have be possible to pull off if the film had been made in the United States. The problem with the film is that it almost never lets up or gives us a moment to collection our senses and figure out what the hell is going on. I’m sure if I saw the film three of four times, I’d pull together something resembling the plot, but I’m not really inclined to do that. I’m well aware that you rarely go to action films for plot, but I tend to like to hang the set pieces on some skeleton of a story, just to keep things interesting and allow me to care about someone in the damn story. Did I mention that Henry is a mute, so we don’t even have much of a sense of what he’s like as a person. As a result, I didn’t really care who lived or died, except I was pretty sure I wanted Jimmy to live because he made me laugh.
This brand of brutal, breathless Russian cinema is about nothing but taking the viewer on an actual thrill ride, as seen through the eyes of Henry. Director Naishuller certainly makes that happen, and I’ll give him all the credit in the world for pulling it off so convincingly. If there had been just a little more substance and less endless flash, I think I would have truly loved HARDCORE HENRY. As it stands, perhaps gamers and extreme athletes might get a kick out of the film, but the rest of us will probably find it exhausting.
