#and I see the parallels in the brutality-as-slapstick action and the kinda wacky tone although it didn't bother me as much in Hardcore

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Film Friday: Hardcore Henry

In general, I'm fond of movies with a bit of thought behind them. It doesn't have to be high art based on deep philosophy, but generally a thematic idea or concept discussed through the medium of film is a good start. I generally also expect movies to happen from the perspective of some nondiegetic observer, but today's movie rasies the question of "hey what if we said bollocks to all of that and made a FPS Game movie?" Honestly, that's very bold of them.

Henry's day is off to a rough start as he wakes up with more robot parts than human parts, only to discover that his freshly augmented body has made him wanted in the worst way. Generic evil science man with magnetic powers, Akan, wants him for use in his super soldier program, and a conglomerate of identical individuals named Jimmy also has their design on him.

Henry, rendered mute by being interrupted before his voice program could be installed, finds himself living through a 2010-era first-person shooter, with lengthy sequences devoted to length parkour chases, very scripted-seeming stealth, turret shooting on rails, and of course, gratuitous nudity. A somewhat rarer partial song-and-dance number also occurs at one point, but I'm of the opinion that the shooters of the era should also feature those.

It's all very silly. There is a theme of sorts about memory and identity going on here, but it feels like an afterthought. This may be intentional, considering how Henry's enough of a blank slate that the plot has nothing to gain traction to, and it's the kind of unforced error that a shooter of the era may have made.

Now, I am cutting the movie a bit of slack here, because it is very fun in a very stupid way. Sharlto Coperley is having a lot of fun bouncing around in the various ludicrous avatars of Jimmy, although I would argue perhaps not enough to excuse the unfortunately very era-appropriate No Homo-jokes.

There is however no denying that it's in the action that the main appeal lies. The action scenes are often chaotic, but uses that chaos wisely, mostly to disguise cuts and give the movie's budget a helping hand by distracting from occasionally dodgy CGI and compositing. It feels like damning with faint praise, but Hardcore Henry has really perfected the look of the mid-budget game, and as a mid-budget action movie, that is honestly pretty cool, it's not an easy style to emulate.

There's, I would argue, no small amount of art in achieving that look and sense of internal consistency. Of course Akan turns up semi-randomly to beat you up some and you never get around to striking back. It's a cutscene and he has metal-manipulating powers to rob you of agency. Of course Akan folds like a cheap chair once you actually fight him, boss battles in shooters were often just uninspired quicktime-events in those days. Of course we're in Russia, in addition to being a cheaper location to shoot, it's the easiest way to ensure none of the people we murder are red-bIooded Americans, which was considered a bit faux-pas to shoot at in games of the era. I could go on, but many of the aesthetic or logic flaws in this movie fit in like that. Not all of them of course, but I'm mostly trying to stick with the positives here.

Hardcore Henry is a dumb movie, but it's dumb in a decently entertaining way. People not fond of gratuitous violence or (perhaps intentionally) bad plots need not apply, but if it's your bag, it's a very decent bag