Hardcore Henry Review

7 out of 10

Cast:

Haley Bennett as Estelle

Sharlto Copley as Jimmy

Danila Kozlovsky as Akan

Tim Roth as Henry’s Father

Andrei Dementiev as Slick Dmitry

Cyrus Arnold as Nat

Will Stewart as Robbie

Directed by Ilya Naishuller

Hardcore Henry Review:

Experimentation is the catalyst which makes art grow. Unfortunately most experiments fail. It’s the nature of the beast; the necessity of experimentation is the necessity of making something which might not be for anyone. In the modern day, that has left most of the work to the most popular genres where pushing the margins might not be alienating, especially action films which tend to be shallow enough to support new takes. Case in point, Ilya Naishuller’s Hardcore Henry, an adrenalized mash-up of some of the most popular first-person shooter video games of the last decade translated to the medium of film.

This means pushing the use of point-of-view to the extreme as the audience spends the entire film firmly in the viewpoint of the titular Henry, a mute hard case with no memory before awakening in a lab with new cybernetic arms and legs being attached. What follows is a continuous rush of adrenaline and violence as Henry races across Moscow to rescue his wife (Bennett) from the telekinetic madman (Kozlovsky) who has kidnapped her. It’s not a film which embraces character or exposition in any traditional way (or very much at all), but this is not a bug. It’s an experiment in raw visual storytelling: what is the most which can be experienced by the audience before meaning is lost, what is the least which can be told and meaning still be possible? The natural side effect of such work is that it won’t be for everyone, which can be discouraging as failure is often taken as a sign something wrong is being done.

In art the opposite is true, failure means boundaries are being pushed and most of the growth art forms have had comes from that. Not that Hardcore Henry necessarily has growth in mind, but it can’t quite avoid it either as the strangeness of the set-up and delivery means new forms of communication within the medium have to be addressed. The trio of Russian cinematographers who worked on the film have taken the in-your-face vérité of Shane Hurlbut and cranked it to eleven, shooting the film on rugged GoPro cameras with a focus on pushing the point of view to the extreme over traditional composition or shot design. The storytelling is similarly stretched as the Henry goes on the search for answers, his only assistance coming for the seemingly omniscient and unkillable Jimmy (Copley), who appears periodically to point Henry in the direction he needs to go. Besides well representing the helpful AI component of video games (one of the many parts of the gaming vocabulary Naishuller incorporates), Jimmy provides most of the non-violent life Henry has as he always appears in different guises and personalities from a drug-crazed party animal to a hippie biker to a stiff upper-lip British Colonel. Copley is all in and his performance keeps Henry going (character and film) when it does take a breather from the constant set-pieces.

Which isn’t often, and that’s probably for the best. Naishuller certainly understands the benefit of character and humanism – the weight of a recurring flashback with Tim Roth shows it. In fact, it has more effect than anything anyone else says or does, which says a lot about the strength of the relationship story which supposedly drives the plot. As an object of desire, Bennett works but the necessity of keeping her separated from Henry and us keeps any sort of real emotional connection from developing. Henry is much more of a bro-film and when it sticks to that it is at its best.

More than that, it is a paean to video games and what they do well – right down to level-layout set pieces and helpfully updated mission objectives – and a grand experiment in what action films can do but haven’t been. Does it work completely? No, it is too intentionally shallow for all but the most avid action fans. But even if it doesn’t push the form to greater heights by itself, it will inspire someone who will in the future and for that, regardless of its own merits and shortcomings, it should be lauded.