Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 28, 2011
The Critic's Corner
“The Green Hornet”
David Laprad
If you see “The Green Hornet,” resist the temptation to ask questions. Because as soon as you start questioning things in the movie, its integrity unravels like a cheap sweater.
For example, the hero’s sidekick, Kato, is able to see things in slow motion and calculate bone-cracking martial arts moves in advance based on where people and objects are located. Since he possesses his superhuman abilities from frame one, I had no trouble suspending my disbelief.
But the titular hero of the movie, Britt Reid, is an out-of-shape slacker with the fighting skills of a lump of dough, so when he suddenly develops the same abilities as Kato, it’s tempting to ask how. But if you do, you’ll start sliding down a slippery slope from which there is no return and miss out on the wall-to-wall, outrageous fun “The Green Hornet” offers.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. “The Green Hornet” is a superhero movie based on a classic radio program that first aired in the 1930s. It stars Seth Rogen as Reid, a billionaire playboy who becomes a masked vigilante in a desperate bid to do something useful with his life. The catalysts for his transformation are the unexpected death of his father, the editor of a major newspaper, and his discovery that Kato, his dad’s assistant, is a genius.
Not only can Kato invent just about anything, he’s also handy in a fight. So when Kato saves Reid and an anonymous couple from a gang of thugs, Reid sees an opportunity and grabs it. His idea: the two of them will act like bad guys so they can penetrate the criminal underground and tear it to pieces from the inside out.
Other characters populate the screen as well. The villain is Chudnofsky, a Russian gangster who’s gained control of all criminal activity in Los Angeles and doesn’t take kindly to the Green Hornet’s intrusion on his turf. Then there’s Lenore Case, Reid’s assistant at the newspaper he inherited from his father. Since neither Reid nor Kato know how to go about putting their plan in motion, they rely on Case’s research skills and knowledge of criminal history to guide them.
While the story Rogen conceived for the movie is a far cry from Shakespeare, it hits all the right beats and builds to a nice finish. I also liked the character work. For instance, as Reid dismisses Kato’s contributions to their initial success, friction grows between him and his friend. But Reid develops character over the course of the movie and takes steps to mend fences. Rogen and his co-writers weren’t aiming for an Oscar, but they didn’t ignore the need for character arcs, either.
“The Green Hornet” is also rife with humor. Rogen is known for his roles in sex comedies such as “Knocked Up” and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” but here, he reins in his seedier tendencies while unleashing his likeable, goofy side, and it works well. He keeps things light, but is able to shift gears when the action heats up or the moment calls for something serious. Many action comedies are unable to strike a balance between laughs and drama, but thanks to Rogen’s performance, “The Green Hornet” avoids this pitfall.
I mentioned wall-to-wall fun. For starters, there are the fights scenes, in which the combatants defy physics to create a ballet of carnage. Kato leaps across cars, lands painful blows, swings from victim to victim, and uses streetlights and other props to take out one bad guy after another. Director Michel Condry filmed “The Green Hornet” in 2D and then converted it to 3D, and the results are so good, they even impressed the purist in me. The fights scenes in which Kato uses his unique powers look great and are thrilling to watch.
Then there are the stunts, which are off the chart. In one scene, Kato and Reid race across L.A. in a bulletproof car, Chudnofsky and his cronies close behind. Kato turns the wheel over to Reid, climbs out of the car and into one of the pursuing vehicles, takes out its occupants, returns to his car, fire a missile at the building in which Reid’s newspaper is housed, drives through the hole the explosion creates, loses the back half of the car as it rides ten stories up a glass elevator, then plows through dozens of cubicles using only front wheel drive to deliver Reid to his office.
And he still fails to shake off Chudnofsky.
“The Green Hornet” is ballsy, over the top, and unrealistic. But it’s also fun, has great action, tells a coherent story and features characters with whom you don’t mind spending a couple of hours. If this sounds like your cup o’ cappuccino, see it in a theater in 3D.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad @hamiltoncountyherald.com.
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