The Green Hornet

2011 has been a pretty horrendous year so far for films and ‘The Green Hornet’ also failed to make a huge impact on myself. I think it was a terrible idea to create a film based on the TV show from the 1960’s, which was awesome! (Originally it out as a radio show in the 1930’s, but I mentioned the TV show, as more people have probably heard of it). As usual Seth Rogan plays a bumbling idiot and still manages to overcome the worst to come out on top (just like every other film he’s starred in.)

‘The Green Hornet’ is a ‘comical’ superhero, action film and follows many stereotypical traits that this genre has to offer. Britt Reid (played by Seth Rogan) is a lazy slacker and is the son of James Reid (played by Tom Wilkinson), who is the publisher of the only independent newspaper in Los Angeles ‘The Daily Sentinel.’ His father is found dead in their million dollar household from an allergic reaction to a bee sting leaving Britt to fire all his staff from the inherited business apart from house assistant and mechanic Kato (played by Jay Chou). After being chased by the police during a drunken night and a brief scuffle in the street, Britt persuades Kato that they should become a crime-fighting duo to help maintain order in the city. Kato creates a brand new car, complete with gadgets and weapons (this car is the best thing about this film) and is known as the ‘Black Beauty.’ 

The main plan is to capture a Russian mobster called Benjamin Chudnofsky (played by Christoph Waltz) who his father originally set out to expose. Cutting a long story short, the idea is that Britt publicises ‘The Green Hornet’ (using the help of his assistant researcher Lenore Case, played by Cameron Dias) to draw out Chudnofsky. Basically two men kick the living hell out of a whole mob and get away with being heroes (how true to life!).

Most of the film is generic and contains the same content we’ve seen in possibly every comedy superhero film. There are some good elements in this film, like the slow motion martial arts kicks and Kato being able to do all sorts of cool stuff, like open up beer bottles with the palm of his hand like Frisbees and make a mean coffee with a leafy design on it. I was really disappointed with this film, especially for the fact that Michel Gondry who created the amazing ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ directed this film. The characters are funny at first, but this soon wears off.

This film had a huge budget and most of it went to waste on the 3D factor of the movie (why even bother). The 3D effects were neither breathtaking nor entertaining. There is a really action packed car chase which I did enjoy and some stylistic fighting sequences but there is nothing special that this film has to offer and just falls flat on its face.

I apologise for the negativity but I was expecting a lot more from this film.