The Green Hornet

I figured I might as well strike whilst the iron's hot and review a film that has only just come out. I figured since The Green Hornet has had the shit marketed out of it (seriously, I can't turn around without seeing billboards, trailers, TV spots and the like) I figured I'd check it out. Also, it's a big budget action/comedy concerning superheroes so I won't have to exactly stretch myself creatively for the actual review. Let's roll, Kato!

The Green Hornet (2011)

Are they ever going to run out of superheroes to adapt for the big screen? Whilst they existed before (Superman, Batman and some oddball ones like Blade and The Crow), the 2000s really stepped this up and we've now had a good, solid decade of superpowers, nefarious villains and impractical costumes. My question is this- is there going to be a point where studio execs go to the superhero archives and find that all the good ones are gone and the ones left are either too obscure to adapt or too shit to even care about? Having said that, The Green Hornet isn't exactly a superhero per se, but he definitely belongs in the Batman/Iron Man camp- i.e. in lieu of using their wealth to help in the form of buying new hospital wings and the like, they turn themselves into technology-aided superbadasses. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it's the most selfish way to help people ever.

"I want the head of The Green Hornet and I want it tonight!"

After newspaper mogul James Reid (Tom Wilkinson) unexpectedly dies, his son, partying layabout Britt (Seth Rogen) inherits his father's wealth and estate. After being introduced to human Swiss Army knife Kato (Jay Chou), the pair get drunk and decide to fight crime using Kato's mechanical skills and kung fu mastery as well as Britt's money and newspaper connections to hype The Green Hornet. However, for every hero (or pair of heroes) there must be a villain- and this picture's baddie is the forgettably named Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) a drug baron who seems preoccupied with his image and being feared. To complicate things, Britt also hires a new secretary, Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) who captures the attention of both Britt and Kato. The plot is alright, but it has its problems. Chudnofsky is a weak villain, which is a shame considering that I enjoyed the pairing of Britt and Kato. It's doubly a shame as Chudnofsky is played by the brilliant Christoph Waltz, whose performance as Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds is so ingrained in my brain I have to stop myself from saying "That's a bingo!" at the most inopportune moments. As I said, I thought the pairing of Rogen and Jay Chou works well. Sure, Chou struggles with any line over a certain number of syllables, but Kato's not exactly known for his ability to soliloquise anyway. Rogen is just Rogen really, so your general impression of the film will be heavily swayed by how you feel about that. Cameron Diaz is underused and seems to be purely into the film to give The Green Hornet to feed him information and give him the (green) horn(et).

Here's where my quest to become a respected film critic stumbles slightly. I really enjoyed The Green Hornet. It's tough to be certain in your convictions when paid, professional writers are slating whatever it is that you liked. Still, this blog ain't about them- it's about me. I found the film to be pretty funny at times- something which I wasn't expecting since I find most Hollywood comedies as funny as a housebrick enema. Even though my higher brain function told me not to, I still laughed a shameful amount at the inclusion of Gangsta's Paradise.The action is also really quite good, with some genuine ingenuity to be found between all the explosions and slow-motion shots. However, that whole "blowing up the speed camera" gag, proudly displayed in the trailer? C'mon- I know Johnny English isn't a masterpiece, but some people have seen it. To rip it off so blatantly is an odd move. Director Michel Gondry doesn't get to leave his own brand of weirdness on the film, but the occasional shot reminds that there is a more creative director behind this very polished "motion picture event". The splitscreen showing the rise in gang activity in response to The Green Hornet's actions is the first thing that comes to mind. Oh, before I forget- fuck the 3D.

Chudnofsky is definitely the main problem with this film. He's not funny and the efforts to make him self-conscious smack of "needing to give him a thing" when it came down to the writing stage. Had it been handled better, maybe the change to Bloodnofsky could have actually made sense, rather than appearing like a lazy way to up the stakes in the third act. To use Waltz in this way is just a waste of talent. He can play charismatic villains, this we know. So why the flying fuck is he boring and unfunny in this film?

"I thought we were both badassess the other night. I kicked that guy in the face, like, three times remember? I kicked him in the face!"

Here's where I have to be as objective as I can be. I have a high tolerance for action/superhero films and will still totally be on board with the fact that Powersman has to get the Gragnathor to defeat the evil Zardex long after most people have got up and left, muttering that Powersman II: Mr. Zardex Goes to Washington is too generic and unrealistic. I love these types of films. I'm also aware that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for them either, so I figured I would just say what I liked/disliked and leave it at that- y'know, like a fucking film reviewer or something. The banter between Rogen and Chou is better than I expected, which is a good thing as the film relies quite heavily on that to keep the story ticking along at a good pace. As I said, the action is fun too, with the unique "Kato-vision" adding a fresh twist on standard fight choreography. So, go and see The Green Hornet and feed back to me. It'd be interesting to find out whether I'm alone in this one or not. Anyway, as much as I'd like to give it a four, I know in my brain that just ain't right.

Tron: Legacy

It's already been an interesting start to the year for me, but try as I might, I can't just watch a film without letting everyone know what I thought of it. So, I'm back here again, tippity-tapping my views down on my own slice of the 'net. Anyway, I done seen some films so, let's Tron it up.

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Now, I don't know if you've seen the original Tron. If you have, I'm sure you'll agree that despite its fun concept, it has aged badly. Of course it has- it's an 80's film which pioneered the use of computer graphics, I'd be very worried if it hadn't. Still- it has a cult following (a phrase which instantly makes me think of sweaty nerds refusing to accept that whatever they like is shit) and after a very well-received Comic Con mock-up trailer, Tron: Legacy was born.

"The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships, motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day..." 

The basic story goes thusly: Cyber Jesus Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has disappeared leaving his son, Sam an orphan. After 20 years, the now adult and conventionally attractive Sam (Garrett Hedlund) goes looking for his missing father after familar face Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) receives a mysterious page from Flynn Snr. Whilst snooping around, Sam gets sucked into The Grid, a dangerous computer world, which not only reunites him with his father and his new warrior sidekick Quorra (Olivia Wilde), but introduces him to a Fascistic, younger version of Kev named Clu (also Jeff Bridges) who wants to take over the computer world or some such bollocks. Now, by the very nature of being a sequel, the plot won't feel fresh, but that aside, this path still seems very well-trodden indeed. I kept thinking of Jumanji and various other kids' films I've damaged my brain with over the years. Of course, this isn't bad- but it doesn't win any points for originality. Jeff Bridges was pretty good as Kevin Flynn, although a bit too much effort went into making Flynn sound like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, what with ending almost every sciencey-babbly sentence with the word "man". Garrett Hedlund is just a hairstyle and a marketable face and could have easily been played by any other actor like Chris Pine. I'm sure if you put a cow carcass in a cool-looking glowy suit, you'd have a similar portrayal, perhaps with less so-called badass lines before an action sequence kicks off. Olivia Wilde is the distractingly pretty equivalent of Hedlund, really, spending most of her screentime draped over/on things.

Tron: Legacy is quite a frustrating film. After the decent stylistic choice to not have the entire film in 3D (the dimensional shite starts when Sam enters The Grid) I was on board with what it seemed to be bringing to the table. The film didn't seem to be in a hurry to get to The Grid and had a proper (albeit simplistic) story focus. The digi-shite hits the fan after the first couple of action sequences. The film seems to blow its load way too soon, with all the genuinely fun stuff happening soon after Sam's arrival. After seeing the proper trailer, I was most excited for the updated lightcycle action. Whilst it was fun, it was too short to actually get into. I was expecting some kind of epic fight halfway through the film, but was let down by over-eagerness on the film's part. The Disc Wars part was fun too. Well, the parts I saw. The combination of the spastic camerawork as well as the 3D made it quite hard to tell who was who. When Sam first fights a program, the fact that they're wearing very similar suits made it tough to get what exactly was going on. Yes, it was cool when they started fighting on the ceiling, but it doesn't make up for the fact that the sequence was badly shot and edited by some slack-jawed wanker.

 

I'm tempted to just tear apart how Clu was executed, but I can't. Yes, he looks weird, yes he's clearly a CGI creation, but the fact is human beings are very, very good at recognising our own. If there's something amiss, we'll find it, which is why kids at school always pick on the tall or short or fat or ugly. The de-ageing of Bridges is undeniably impressive, but it isn't going to fool anyone. The sooner I accepted that, the sooner I started to enjoy Bridges' performance as Clu. The one major problem I had was the fact that there's a long train journey about three quarters of the way through that just seems to be there to explain some needless plot addition (think The Fifth Element). Firstly, to escape The Grid is meant to be difficult, so why the shit is there a dedicated train service? Secondly, the sheer volume of dialogue at this point is punishing. Instead of drip-feeding us plot-relevant information throughout, the film uses this time to infodump all of the things we need to know (plus several things we don't), with the result that I simply didn't care.

Now for the good points. I chose to get most of my whinging out in one block and end on something fairly positive, because Tron really doesn't deserve the hate it has garnered from some corners of the Internet. The film's visuals are genuinely stunning. I loved the look of The Grid and its inhabitants-everything looked either very chic, very flashy and just damn cool, even though the ol' orange/blue look still somehow finds its way in. The use of 3D is almost justifiable here- which is probably the most I'm going to be impressed by 3D. The soundtrack, by Gallic robots Daft Punk, is fantastic too- mixing orchestral sounds and electronica like it ain't no thang. I liked Michael Sheen's Castor- a kind of whitewashed David Bowie character with echoes of The Riddler, even though he's barely in it. The inevitable love stuff between Sam and Quorra is actually subtlely done and not once does the film decide to have them passionately neck each other or anything. In a film where recognising stuff from other films is a problem, I'm glad I didn't have "standard lacklustre love story" to add to the list.

 

"Change the scheme! Alter the mood! Electrify the boys and girls if you'd be so kind."

As I said, Tron: Legacy doesn't warrant the e-bashing it has got. It is definitely an imbalanced film, with too much of the fun action weighted towards the start of the film (I know there is a climactic Lightjet dogfight, but I wasn't really that impressed by it), but it's really not bad. I definitely enjoyed parts of it, which was made all the better by the visuals. I suppose though, it is quite an average film in a very shiny wrapper (where have I heard that before?) and therefore I must score it as such: