Reviews 

Review: The Green Hornet

By | January 25th, 2011
Posted in Reviews | % Comments


The Green Hornet is a property that has gone through many variations since it’s original inception. When it came to the film, the movie has been on a veritable roller coaster ride of directors and screenwriters, notably Kevin Smith and Stephen Chow, both of whom dropped the project for various reasons. Of course, the film eventually landed with the ever-so talented Michel Gondry as well as stoner-comedy superstar, Seth Rogen – arguably the least likely of duos for a Golden Age “superhero” duo. Of course, despite the clout that hangs over the film, the general response with the comic community has been relatively positive, and both Rogen and Gondry have often insisted that we as fans need to simply give it a chance. So – we, and I, did.

Check behind the cut for my thoughts.

The Green Hornet is not a superhero film in the traditional sense. While he might be a masked vigilante, the Green Hornet has always been pulp hero as opposed to a traditional superhero. That’s why in a property adaptation like this, you sort of have to take the output with a grain of site due to it’s inherent intent. This is not the same as Frank Miller trying to revamp the Spirit into a dark and gritty noir … thing (it’s best to leave it at that), but rather two entertainers generally known for light-hearted work (to an extent, on Gondry’s half) trying to piece together a viable property for the modern market. With a character like the Green Hornet, they’re basically running with a character who is generally unknown to the modern audience, leaving the room for expansion wide open.

The basic elements of the Green Hornet are all here. Britt Reid, head of a newspaper, dons a domino mask and snappy outfit in order to take a stance against crime in a non-traditional sense. The idea here is that the Green Hornet and his partner Kato portray super “villains”in order to effectively abolish crime by becoming those that run it. While it’s not entirely the greatest (read: most intelligent) idea in the world, it plunges the Green Hornet and Kato face first into a turf war with the current kingpin, Chadnovsky (played by the Jew Hunter, Christoph Waltz), as well as some run-ins with the police and the DA (played by David Harbour). It’s in this that the Green Hornet story and element, at it’s most basic, is there on the screen. It’s not a pulp-y kind of story, but the ridiculous element behind the whole scenario is present, and it is still the Green Hornet.

Of course, that’s generally where the compliments end. The problem with the Green Hornet lies in that it is a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s not a parody or a satire, and it’s not even a straight forward action-packed superhero film. It tries to straddle two middle grounds, with goofball Seth Rogen offering a lot of arrogance and ego to the role of Britt Reid in a way that sometimes is funny and sometimes isn’t. In many ways, this film is kind of a buddy cop film, but even those have more standing ground than this. No, what Green Hornet desperately wants to be is the next Iron Man, and you can feel it throughout the whole film. Iron Man was an absolute breakout success, with a character that fans of comics loved but that moviegoers didn’t really know. When seeing the film, what they found was an incredibly entertaining action film that also happened to be rather hilarious due to the charm and wit held by Robert Downey Jr. as he played oh-so-perfectly Mr. Tony Stark. Iron Man didn’t need to worry about straddling any lines because it knew what it was – a superhero film. The action is a given, the comedy is accidental. With The Green Hornet, however, the film never really is able to decide what it wants to be. For the opening part of the film, it’s generally a comedy. As the film grows, you can see serious elements trying to poke through, but as the film tries to grab a serious tone, you never really feel for the characters or any danger they are in due to the film inherently starting off and feeling like a comedy. In fact, the death of Reid’s father that eventually leads him down the vigilante path, is a glossed over and borderline ridiculous moment (to an extent), and it keeps us from gaining any real care for the character’s situation.

Continued below

Seth Rogen isn’t exactly the problem of the film. In fact, Rogen is actually pretty great in the role. We’ve known Rogen as a good for nothing stoner who has to overcome his … well, stoner-ness in order to solve whatever problem is thrown at him. In this film, not only did he lose a ton of weight to better fit the role, but he actually plays a character that doesn’t smoke pot through the entire film. That might come out in a catty sense, but it’s true. Seth Rogen’s version of Britt Reid is certainly not the classic Britt Reid, but closer to Britt Reid Jr. from Kevin Smith’s defunct-script-turned-comic. Rogen manages to play the brash arrogance of youth as well as the egotism of celebrity quite well, and brings that heavily into the film throughout the whole run. Without a doubt, Reid is a massive egotist, and it’s through this that we’re generally supposed to care about his growth as a character more. Unfortunately, by the end of the film, Rogen hasn’t brought Reid anywhere really different. Yes, he is a somewhat new man, but he’s still fairly arrogant, and that arrogance is supposed to serve towards comedic effect. Again with the Iron Man comparison, but we watched Tony Stark grow from an arrogant character to a man using arrogance as a mask to society in order to initially hide his Iron Man self and eventually use those two natures to seperate the lives as best he can (until alcohol is involved). With Rogen’s Reid, we simply have an arrogant man who finds a new way to be arrogant, and it’s hard to connect to that character.

On top of that, I’d be remiss in not at least noting that Seth Rogen made a better action star in Pineapple Express – because it’s true. Pineapple Express isn’t an action film, it’s a comedy, but watching the character growth Rogen has in that as well as the finale is a completely logical and entertaining endpoint for the film. With Green Hornet, Rogen leaves most of the fighting and growing duties to Jay Chou, leaving him at the end of the film essentially the same person he was at the beginning (despite a two minute sequence in which you think, just for a second, that Rogen is going to pull it off in the end).

Rogen’s co-star Jay Chou is a general saving grace of the film, as most of the best parts of the movie lie with him. Chou plays Kato, who gives nods to Bruce Lee (the original Kato), and he nails everything that is great about the character. Chou is not traditionally an American actor by any sense, and his accent really brings out some of what made the original Hornet radioplays charming about the character. Kato was always supposed to be the bigger bad ass of the duo, and in this film he is tremendously. Every great action scene you’ll remember by the time the film ends are thanks to Kato. Every time Hornet and Kato get in a jam and don’t know how to get out, Kato saves the day. Every single time you think all hope is lost, Kato manages to find the Deus Ex Machina. None of this would be even half as charming if it weren’t for Jay Chou. Unlike Rogen, Chou plays a very unassuming character who doesn’t survive on ego, but rather a character who – not to sound overly cliche and borderline silly – follows his dreams. He wants to work on cars, so he does. He wants to create things, so he does. While Rogen sits in a hot tub with some ladies barking things at Chou, Jay Chou takes Kato and offers the rock that the film manages to push forward on. And this is to say nothing of his martial artistry, to which he is the sole proprieter of the film. There are no characters who even challenge this – Jay Chou is the only character who actively pulls off any extravagant choreography, and every time he is allowed to do so it is always entertaining.

Continued below

The rest of the cast simply pushes by. Oddly enough, this isn’t a role that Christoph Waltz can be raved about. Waltz pulls a tremendous opening scene, but then throughout the rest of the movie he offers a very tame performance. To be fair, it’s rather hard to be judged against a breakout American role in Inglourious Basterds, but for a man that is now somewhat of a “go-to villain,” he doesn’t bring anything special to the role. His role as Hans Landa was terrifying and endearing. His role as Chadnovsky is … there. Meanwhile, Cameron Diaz has the role of the “hot chick,” but instead she simply proves further that her Charlies Angels days as a sex icon are rather gone. It’s not that Cameron Diaz is explicitly unattractive, but there’s nothing exciting about her in the movie despite the fact that she’s supposed to be eye candy and a love interest for both Chou and Rogen. She’s also supposed to play a criminologist, but instead of appearing as an intricate character to the film, she instead serves as a simple plot device to once again get Rogen and Chou out of jams. It’s fairly dull. A cameo from James Franco offers suitable entertainment, but beyond that no one in the cast does anything worth mentioning. Not even Edward James Olmos.

Arguably the biggest disappointment, Michel Gondry is incredibly tame throughout the film. Gondry is known to us for whimsical storytelling seen in The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and an assortment of music videos. Even Be Kind, Rewind, which in itself as kind of a tame film, manages to hold that Gondry charm in it. Gondry certainly has had his foray’s into a different kind of storytelling (with Dave Chapelle’s Blockparty or even Thorn In The Heart, both documentaries), he always manages to retain a bit of his style in the film. With the Green Hornet, that retained amount is very miniscule. The fight sequences starring Jay Chou are very much Gondry, both visually and in the choreography. There’s also a sequence at the end in which Britt Reid tries to solve one last mystery that just screams of Gondry storytelling. But once that’s over, so is the Gondry element. What’s sad about that is that if you had told me that any other director had put this together, I would’ve believed it. Heck, I could believe that Seth Rogen himself directed it. There are nice and fun sequences, but that’s it. This isn’t a Gondry film, and as a fan of his very visual and very intriguing storytelling, that acts as a huge let down. Gondry never pretended it would be like all of his other films, but you would think that a director with as much creativity as him might find more interesting ways to keep up the pacing, or at least show us the story. This is about as basic as it gets, and what adds somewhat insult to injury is watching the episode of Jimmy Kimmel that he directed in promotion to the Green Hornet, which is wildly more entertaining visually than this is.

The Green Hornet essentially gives you what you put into it. If you are a Green Hornet fan (and, not to be rude, but I don’t know too many), the film is essentially a let down. It’s a mindless flick, but not one that explicitly worms it’s way into your heart. Property based films usually go one of two ways, and Green Hornet has essentially gone the bad way. While I don’t regret seeing it or laughing at/with it, the film meets my unenthused expectations rather spectacularly. Before seeing the film, I didn’t expect to see a film that I loved, and now that the film has ended and life has moved on I can’t say I’m counting down to the release date for it’s Blu-ray. There are films based on properties that take their own direction and end up being succesful in our eyes, or ones that don’t. Green Hornet generally straddles that line, but if push came to shove it’d fall into the category of a one and done popcorn flick. You see it for a few scenes of action as well as some reasonably funny jokes, but then you go home.

Final Verdict: 5.4 – Pass


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

EMAIL | ARTICLES