Film Review - Hardcore Henry (2016)

Hardcore Henry is a Russian production all in First Person Perspective as a man named Henry wakes up in a lab missing an arm and a leg but after his scientist wife pieces him back together a man named Akan attacks and kidnaps her forcing Henry to go and rescue her.

Now I was really excited to see this film as the preview for it was fucking exhilarating with its use of Don't Stop Me Now by Queen and the action scenes feeling really exciting but could the film itself actually deliver the goods?

Well no sadly as this movie is a big disappointment for me so much so that when it ended I thought to myself "Is That It?" but before I delve into that I want to talk about what I did like:

- First off the film looks terrific the First Person Perspective works a real treat and while watching it I thought to myself "This is as if someone took a VR Helmet and turned it into a movie camera to shoot a film" and it really felt that way at least for me and not once did I feel bored looking at the film from that technical perspective.

- And secondly the violence in the film just had me grinning from ear to ear as this is full on R rated violence with oodles of blood on screen and it is about fucking time too as I am so sick to death of all these big action films that just chicken out with their violence because they want that magical PG-13 rating that gives them the maximum bang for the buck and boy does it feel so fucking good to have some blood in a film again.

But where this film faulters majorly is in its storytelling frankly it's just a ripoff of Robocop from 1987 where you have the cybernetic guy, the evil villain, the big twist to it all and none of it really was that interesting for me and the use of Don't Stop Me Now in the film itself was immensely disappointing but that's all I'll say on that front.

As for Akan the lead villain well he wasn't all that great don't get me wrong his powers look great but all he ended up being was a cheapo Magneto knockoff but without any real motivation which Magneto always has and why it makes him such a compelling villain to watch.

And so that was Hardcore Henry sadly my biggest disappointment of the year so far, rent Robocop instead, 1.5 out of 5.