“Hardcore Henry” isn’t the first movie to be shot entirely from a first-person perspective, but it is the first action movie to utilize the gimmick. While it’s a little surprising that it hasn’t been attempted before in today’s YouTube generation, that’s likely because there was no one crazy enough to try it. Enter Ilya Naishuller, the Russian filmmaker behind the viral POV music videos for his indie rock band Biting Elbows. Though even Naishuller has admitted that he was skeptical about whether a full-length feature using this technique could work, he deserves kudos for delivering a film that’s exactly as advertised. “Hardcore Henry” is definitely hardcore – an adrenaline-fueled, ultra-violent, one-of-a-kind experience that stands as the closest thing to a live-action video game that you’ll ever see. Too bad it’s not any good.
The movie places the audience in the title role of Henry, a man who’s just been resurrected from the dead by a scientist claiming to be his wife Estelle (Haley Bennett). Henry has lost his memory and ability to speak, and can only look on as he’s outfitted with a number of robotic enhancements. But before Estelle is able to activate Henry’s voice module, the lab is attacked by Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), a telekinetic albino psychopath with villainous plans to use the technology inside Henry’s cybernetic body to build an army of super soldiers. Henry manages to escape, but Estelle is kidnapped in the process, so he teams up with a mysterious ally named Jimmy (Sharlto Copley) – who has a habit of getting himself killed and then respawning as one of his many clones – to rescue her and stop Akan’s plan for world domination. In other words, the plot of every video game ever made. (Okay, not really.)
