Review: The Green Hornet

So the long laboured production of  THE GREEN HORNET, 14th January, finally comes out and we have a review here on THN.

The film is a radio serial/comic book/TV show adaptation originally coming to prominance in the thirties on the radio but most people know it from the 60’s show with the legendary Bruce Lee as Kato.

It features socialite Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) who has lived in the shadow of his newspaper father’s (Tom Wilkinson) unending disappointment for dodging responsibility all his life.  But of course responsibility eventual does come a-calling when his father dies of a bee sting forcing Britt to take over the family newspaper.  Meeting Kato (Jay Chou), his father’s chauffeur, they end up going for a joy ride and stop a couple being beaten up.  The exhilaration from stopping a crime gives them the idea to become masked vigilantes called The Green Hornet.  Over the course of the movie they come across a big bad in the form of Christopher Waltz (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) and a smoking hottie in Cameron Diaz which includes a funny scene about her age. That’s the jist of it.

First off I would like to say that I have very much enjoyed the previous works of nearly everyone involved in the film especially Michel Gondry, the director, Christopher Waltz, Tom Wilkinson (MICHAEL CLAYTON) and Edward James Olmos (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA).  Sadly, none of these fantastic talents are used to their potential.  I can understand that some of them are only secondary characters but concerning Waltz and Gondry, they should of been far more prominate in the film.  Waltz, because a hero is only as good as his villian and Gondry because he was the director and one of the most visually unique directors out there but because he had not been utitlised fully, the film looks like the rest of the normal Hollywood styled films spilling out of America.  I’m not saying that both of the talents were wasted as Waltz does deliver his lines very well as does portray a different type of villiany but he might as well of not been in the film with the amount of screen time given to him.  Gondry does create a fun fight scene between Rogen and Chou and some funny sped up scenes at the start but overall deliveries a bland (for him) film.  He also doesn’t experiment with the 3D which you might expect Gondry too.

When it comes to the two leads in Seth Rogen and Jay Chou (CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER) Rogen does his usual thing which is enjoyable but starting to tire a bit.  Chou actually out performers Rogen a large amount of times and not just in the fight scenes but in comedy and delivery.  This could be down to Rogen and Evan Goldberg writing the character of Kato tighter than that of Rogen since he seems to of graduated from the Will Ferrell School of Improvisational Acting.

Overall the story is nothing different from a lot of other pulp type characters such as THE SHADOW and THE PHANTOM but with modern comedy Rogen has perfected in his films.  But the main problem is that the film seems to be missing a heart.  All the actions and dialogue seems to lead to a punchline rather than any emotional resonance, and I know that it is an action comedy films but all of Rogen’s other films do and films such as BATMAN or SPIDER-MAN do as well.  Due to this I didn’t care about any of the characters, whether they were in trouble or the typical split between the duo.

There were/are many rumours about troubles all the way through the productions from possible power struggles and studio interference which didn’t help the finished project.  But in the end the script and lack of clear directional leadership from Gondry was most likely the downfall of the film, not that this was a terrible or even bad film but just forgettable.