Hardcore Henry By localroger in localroger's Diary Sun Apr 17, 2016 at 06:15:47 PM EST Tags: localroger bloviates, movies, hardcore henry (all tags)
	Hardcore Henry is a video game that got lost on its way to the studio and ended up being made into a movie instead. It's an interesting gimmick that will probably entertain a few people but probably won't be done again because they've exhausted the one story you can effectively tell in this style.

Henry is the movie that should have been licensed from Doom, or really any other FPS video game. The movie really does go 90 minutes without ever departing from the first person perspective, and we don't ever find out what Henry really looks like. He never encounters a mirror and the closest we get to seeing "ourself" is a highly stylized computer animation showing our internal components. And Henry has internal components. He is a cyborg, a prototype super-soldier who is more machine than human. This is of course a very basic video game trope though not seen so often or so thoroughly in the movies. He/We awake at the beginning of the movie with no memories, so the audience gets to go along in equal ignorance as Henry tries to figure out who he is and why everyone seems so intent on killing him. The movie is set and filmed in Russia, so that most of the close caption would consist of [people talking in Russian] because neither we nor Henry are meant to be able to understand them. It is set in a dystopic future where some technologies, like smart cell phones, are mundanely familiar while others like the cyborg enhancements are quite far out. The main bad guy clearly escaped from an X-Men knockoff. He has mad telekinesis powers and there is nobody else like him or any clue where he came from in the story. The story is carefully crafted to work with the first-person film POV gimmick, and it's hard to think of another story that could be filmed the same way and work at all. It's an interesting exercise, which I found fun even though it's far more violent than most movies (and true to its video game roots in that respect). There is also a SAW level degree of body horror. The ending is triumphant and horrific in equal degrees, leaving us to wonder what kind of future Henry could possibly have. All in all a bold adventure in doing something that probably shouldn't have worked at all. I give it six out of six erect horsecocks.

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