Tag Archives: Danila Kozlovsky

Let’s Play Hardcore Henry (2016, directed by Ilya Naishuller)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Hardcore_(2015_film)If you ever wondered whether a movie would ever be able to capture the excitement of watching a total stranger silently play an uninspired video game, Hardcore Henry is here to answer your question.

Filmed with a GoPro Hero 3 camera that used a specially-built rig that could be worn as a mask, Hardcore Henry is an action film that, from beginning to end, is told from a first-person perspective.  You are Henry.  When the film starts, you are having a dream where Tim Roth calls you a “pussy.”  When you wake up, a beautiful woman named Estelle (Haley Bennett) says that you are her husband and that you have amnesia because of a horrible accident.  You also lost your left arm and left leg but Estelle replaces your missing limbs with cybernetic ones.  Just before Estelle can give you a new voice, the laboratory is attacked by a telekinetic albino named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), leaving you as mute at GTA III‘s Claude.  You spend the rest of the movie running through the streets of Moscow, trying to rescue Estelle and getting advice and side missions from Jimmy (Sharlto Copely).  Jimmy was my favorite part of the movie because every time he was killed, he would return in a different version.  Cocaine Jimmy was the best of the Jimmys.

There are a few times when the stunt work is awe-inspiring but too often watching Hardcore Henry felt like watching a Let’s Play video on YouTube, the only difference being that at least the YouTube vid would have featured a joke or two.  The problem is not that Hardcore Henry feels like a video game.  The problem is that doesn’t feel like a good video game.  It feels like a clichéd and uninspired first person shooter, right down to the scenes were Estelle and Jimmy train you on how to use your new abilities and weapons.  (When Henry visits a brothel, it’s as if he figured out how to unlock the hidden rooms in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.)  If Hardcore Henry had a plot that was as interesting as the first person gimmick, it would be a great action film.  But, as it is, Hardcore Henry is just an intriguing experiment that does not really work.

This trailer is HARDCORE

Posted on by Arleigh

Hardcore

Gamers have been clamoring for some of their favorite games to be made into full-length feature films. Whether it be rpgs, adventure or first-person shooters the games that have had a film adaptation were usually not very good. Even the classic first-person shooter Doom got it’s own film with even a gimmicky sequence near the end that put the action in first-person perspective just like the game. In the end, the film didn’t end up being very good.

Last year, there was a crowdfunding for a project that would take that first-person perspective and build a film around it. At first, it sounded like another take on the found footage craze, but this time around it’s not a film using the found footage narrative, but a film that was from the point of view of the protagonist. The film from start to finish will not stop and we’d only see things from the lead’s viewpoint.

This was done to great effect with the remake of the horror from Maniac. Now we shall see how well it works in an action genre that looks to blur the lines what’s film and what’s video game. Just from the released trailer alone this looks quite like some of the first-person shooters gamers have been eating up for the past decade. Having the film also stay in first-person could also make for many audiences to lose their mind or their lunches or both.

Hardcore just had it’s premiere on September 12, 2015 over at the Toronto International Film Festival.