Should you choose to go and see the Green Hornet, splashing out about a tenner for its inflated and unimposing 3D rendering to boot, I’m sorry to inform you that you’ll be wasting your time. That’s not to say that the tale of Britt Reid, the eponymous WASP brat and side-kick to his side-kick, does not, at first, sound like rip roaring good fun on paper. In fact, it’s the failure of this film to add up to the sum of its parts that’ll leave you feeling stung.
It all starts in solid superhero stomping ground, with an orphaned son of a righteous do-gooder millionaire realising that he needs to change his wanton ways and clean up the streets of a corrupt metropolis. Without the fortunate irritation of irradiated spiders to gear up his gene pool, Seth Rogen’s Reid instead uses his vast fortune to finance some nifty gadgets, pimped up wheels and costume changes. So far, so Gotham. Even Alfred gets a make-over, becoming Kato, a role only remembered because Bruce Lee donned the cap and driving gloves in the 60s serial, whose role is to be the actual hero and deus ex machina of every scrape and bother his boss finds himself in.
What makes the prospect of two hours of this rehashed mythology seem fresh is Michel Gondry behind the camera. Gondry is a director reknowned for his sense of visual panache and creativity. His best loved work, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, offered audiences memorable slices of sublime surrealism and a very understated and charming performance from a comedic actor better known for his gurning ability to flail around.
Add to this Seth Rogen, the foul-mouthed everyman king of Apatow’s Jew Wave American cinema, and you’ve piqued my interest. But alas, it wasn’t to be.
The first problem is Rogen himself; phoning in a lead character so dull and expendable, he is starting to make Michael Cera look versatile. The chortles fall flat as he reveals Reid to be a fat and lazy waster, who’ll realise by the credits the error of his goofy ways.
If Rogen is typecast, Christoph Waltz is hideously miscast as the baddie, more braying donkey than bad ass. Waltz, so menacing and poisonous in Inglorious Basterds, has a part so insipid and ridiculous that his meteoric rise to the top of Los Angeles’ criminal underworld is like as if the Kray twins were as tough as the Chuckle Brothers. Cameron Diaz is criminally underused as a barely inflated love interest. Only Jay Chou sparkles, showing he has the chop-socky chops to k.o. as Kato, his easy charm and deadpan delivery lending the script the only sting in its tale.
But the biggest disappointment here is Gondry, who leaves the film lacking any real direction, and whose visual skill and odd ball aesthetics are tailor made for the psychedelic tailoring of the costumed crime fighter.
2 Likes.
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