 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Hardcore Henry • Year: 2015 • Country: Russia, USA • Director: Ilya Naishuller • Main cast: Sharlto Copley, Danila Kozlovsky, Haley Bennett • Runtime: 96 minutes • Production company: Bazelevs Production, Versus Pictures • TRAILER |
In the last decades, when is the last time you have seen an action movie that really blew your mind, that was trully original and that you couldn’t do anything but to recommend it to every single one of your friends? Perhaps The Matrix (1999), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) or even Speed (1994)? That was some time ago, right? Some people would also say The Dark Knight (2008), but it’s not anonymous like the other 3 ones. Well, I can say when was the last time I saw the latest most impressive action film “ever”, a film that would make history together with the previously mentioned before, it was the 14th of October at the Sitges Film Festival 2016, and the movie was Hardcore Henry.
And it’s not only me who has this idea, when the film premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival last year, it became one of the highlights of the festival and started a war between a few major distributors to get the rights for explotation of the movie. At the end it was STX Entertainment who got the deal, and sadly I think they didn’t do a great deal publicizing it.
Hardcore Henry is the first movie by Ilya Naishuller, a russian music videos director who has been developing this adrenaline explossion for a few years. He found the investment and help from producer and director Timur Bekmambetov, one of the current biggest names in russian action films with works like Nightwatch (2004), Daywatch (2006) or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) to his credit, and got the rest via Crowdfunding; which one can say this makes it a movie made by the fans and for the fans.
So who or what is Hardcore Henry? We don’t really know, since the movie starts in a laboratory when Henry is getting repaired. We never get to know the total amount of damaged done to his body, although we see clear most of his parts are mechanical. Ok, Henry is a cyborg. But then an army leaded by the evil telekinetic Akan breaks in and the chase begins. What we get here is one hour and half of first person perspective madness. Explossions, high speed chases, fights, shootings, all of them as fast-paced as you can imagine. Henry fights in laboratories, brothels, the streets of Moscow, empty buildings, high tech premises, or even in the sky in free fall. Meanwhile, your heart can’t do anything but pumping fast as your eyes are glued to the screen witnessing all that unbelievable frenziness. But not only dumb crazy action is what we get here, since the plot still has some surprises, some wild cards up his sleeve.
In a visual matter, Hardcore Henry is almost perfect. Amazingly performed stunts, very good CGI effects and a fast-paced edition go together with the action that was almost entirely shot using GoPro Hero3 Black Edition cameras. But won’t all that mayhem become exhausting for the audience? No sir! Because the very smart script makes sure there is always a nice twist in the right time, so there is no time to yawn.
The film comes with the blessing of big names like Jared Leto and Samuel L. Jackson, who got a “special thanks” mention in the credits, Tim Roth, who got a small role in the film, or the star in this crazy adrenaline cocktail that Hardcore Henry is, Sharlto Copley, who has a very good eye for great debutant masterpieces like he already proved with District 9 (2009). And now, it’s only a matter of time for this little jewel to make grow and grow a legion of fans who take Henry as our new favorite cyborg. How are we supposed to call ourselves now? Hardcorehenryebers? I approve!
RATE: 8/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3072482
