Review: Hardcore Henry

Hardcore Henry unequivocally lives up to its titular descriptive, but this experimental and experiential first-person narrative action flick will polarise. The Twitch generation will hail it as a masterpiece, while others less inclined to senseless splatter and migraine-inducing mayhem may deem Hardcore Henry pure and utter rubbish.

Neither camp would be entirely in the wrong for the movie impresses as much as it irritates. Shot entirely on GoPro cameras, the entire work is an energised blur and there is a frequently thrilling immediacy to the first-person POV during the action scenes. Coordinating the composition and choreography is remarkable considering all the logistics of the various elements - parkour, gunfights, helicopters, tanks, not to mention all the bodies to be shot, knifed, impaled, and flung off roofs.

Yes, one will often murmur "How did they do that?" as much as "How much more of this hell is left to endure?" For all its jacked-up rowdiness, there is something particularly deadening about the entire film. One could chalk it up to its lack of plot, characterisation, structure and, sometimes, basic acting skills. There's Henry, some sort of half-man, half-machine soldier, whose memories and speech have been erased. He wakes up in a laboratory where he gazes upon Estelle (Haley Bennett), who claims to be his wife before she's snatched away by telekinetic albino warlord Akan (Danila Kozlovsky).

And so Henry runs and runs, intent on rescuing a woman he barely remembers, encountering a host of bad guys as well as a succession of eccentrics - a stoner, a punk, a military officer - all played by Sharlto Copley, who even indulges in a song and dance number.

But really who cares? Are we meant to even care? Writer-director Ilya Naishuller, known for his "single-take" first-person videos for his band Biting Elbows, definitely achieves his prime goal of delivering high-octane, extreme and cartoonish violence (the fight in the skyscraper takes Old Boy's most famed sequence and pumps it full of steroids) but instead of being immersive, it feels distancing.

Ultimately, it means nothing and is nothing. That may suit its target audience, who may not even be aware of 1947's Lady in the Lake (the first full-length feature film to employ the first-person camera technique), and are happily content to let their minds become numbed by the orgiastic freneticism let loose onscreen.

Hardcore Henry

Directed by: Ilya Naishuller

Written by: Ilya Naishuller

Starring: Sharlto Copley, Tim Roth, Haley Bennett, Danila Kozlovsky