Hardcore Henry
Unlike the movie adaptation of “Doom” starring Dwayne Johnson and Karl Urban, Hardcore Henry fully commits to the game’s first-person-perspective from start till finish, and I find it fascinating that they were able to roll with that for 96 minutes and still manages to keep the story compelling.
★★★★
Presented entirely from the literal point-of-view of an amnesiac man named Henry, the movie begins with Henry waking up to find his wife Estelle (Haley Bennett) attaching a robotic leg onto his stump. They are in a high-tech lab, and a bad guy named Akan and his mercenaries are on their way to kill them both. Action ensues, Henry and his wife gets separated, and a mysterious person named Jimmy (Sharlto Copley, the star of District 9) appears out of nowhere to help Henry rescue his wife.
I know Hardcore Henry resembles very much like a first-person-shooter computer game (think Doom, Half-Life, Call of Duty, etc.) but I’ve got a feeling this was pitched to the studios with the popularity of found footage horror films in mind, but now it’s for the action genre. Unlike the movie adaptation of “Doom” starring Dwayne Johnson and Karl Urban, Hardcore Henry fully commits to the game’s first-person-perspective from start till finish, and I find it fascinating that they were able to roll with that for 96 minutes and still manages to keep the story compelling. They were smart not to make the entire film one continuous take like Sam Mendes’ 1917, so there are cuts to make scenes move quicker, although I don’t remember there were any significant time jumps in any of the cuts. Hardcore Henry’s story is still, at its core, moving in real-time. Even though Copley’s Jimmy is Henry’s sidekick of sorts, Copley is actually the true lead actor of the film and has the most screen time. We never really see Henry’s face or even hear him speak. Copley also got to play multiple characters with a variety of accents, which adds a lot of fun and humour to the proceedings.
The POV approach helped make the generic action sequences looked fresh and exhilarating. We’ve seen action heroes jump off buildings, but when was the last time you saw it happening through their eyes pre-, mid- and post-jump in one single take? There are many sequences like this throughout the movie, but the best one for me was the one with Henry climbing the side of a building, and continuing to an incredible rooftop chase later.
The downside to the POV gimmick is that some of the action got repetitive really quick, especially in the finale. There are only so many imaginative kills you can create for a horde of henchmen, so there will be some repeated deaths for each henchman, but because you can’t cut away from Henry’s point of view, you will have to sit through every one of them. Also, if you get motion sickness easily, you’re going to have problems with this one as you would with movies that use handheld cameras extensively. There have been reports of audiences almost falling over balconies or throwing up during a show. Lastly, the main villain is also rather generic and uninteresting, save for an out-of-nowhere but cool power set that is never explained. And because Henry is without a face, or a voice, or even any character traits, the only compelling character(s) left are Copley’s.
Overall, this is still a fun and unique twist to the action genre, if you have the stomach for it. I’d also say that this is easily one of the best video game adaptations that is not based on any actual game. And I’d recommend this over the Doom adaptation any day.
Originally published on my Facebook page, here.