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‘HARDCORE HENRY’ TRAILER REVIEW BY METRO CREW
Shot entirely from a first-person vantage point, Hardcore Henry puts viewers in the shoes of Henry, who wakes up as a cyborg with no memory of his past life. Just moments later, a woman who says she is his wife is kidnapped and a murderous gang is after him. Now Henry must navigate his way through Moscow while fighting off dozens of villains. While we think this certainly looks cool in concept, we’re not quite sure how it will actually play out.
Hardcore Henry opens in wide release April 8.
JAIMIE: Hmm … While I can appreciate how ambitious a film like this is, I can’t say I care about watching this in theaters, or ever. Watching everything happen from Henry’s perspective literally made me feel a little nauseous, especially during quick-moving scenes and fight sequences.
CHRISTINA: Seriously, I also got a little nauseous. Not sure how I could sit through two hours of it.
NICOLE: I kind of like how this is shot from his vantage point. The fight scene was really cool — the punching and kicking down doors and catching a gun. It’s just like playing Call of Duty, which I suck at.
PAIGE: Inevitably there will be comparisons to this film and video games, and it does capture pretty well the aesthetic of a first-person shooter, the roll-with-it mentality of the silent protagonist, and the kind of “mission briefing” you would expect to find in a game like Call of Duty or The Division. Unfortunately, this will probably reflect poorly on the industry as a whole, and I fully expect to see eight million reviews decrying the mindless “video gamification” of movies. So, great. That’s just great.
NICOLE: Do we never know what Henry looks like since we’re seeing everything through his eyes? Does he get credit in the film?
JAIMIE: I don’t think not showing the main character benefits anyone. I’m not even certain I heard Henry speak a word in the trailer. So I would say this movie clearly isn’t going for character development and cares mostly about blowing things up and fight scenes. Michael Bay, did you secretly work on this movie?
CHRISTINA: It looks cool, but might not add up to more than that. I do like the idea of getting in the character’s shoes and being a part of this world. However, I didn’t really get that feeling from the trailer (maybe it’s better on the big screen?). It just made me feel pretty confused.
JAIMIE: Honestly, the movie kind of just feels like a bunch of bros sat around trying to think of a concept for a new film while they were playing video games. Then they realized that they should just make the entire film from the perspective of this half-robot man, and immediately thought it was a brilliant idea.
Probably people along the way told them that it might not work with audiences, but they said, “NO, we know exactly what we are doing.” And that is how we have arrived at Hardcore Henry.
