Film Review: The Green Hornet

We've come around to the first major release of 2011, and I was pretty sure that The Green Hornet would actually be pretty entertaining, even if it wasn't the hit of the new year. That also happens to be the same mindset I went into The Other Guys with last year, and I left both with the same bad taste in my mouth. The film had been in pre-production for a while before landing on Michel Gondry to direct, and I honestly don't believe it made much of a difference. There are things done well, and at times it's pretty damn chilling, but does that make up for the numerous narrative and technical shortcomings? I would say not.

The Green Hornet is about Britt Reid, a slacker from a wealthy family headlined by his estranged father, the head of the main city newspaper. After said father is found dead, Britt teams up with his father's mechanic, Kato, to take down the city's underground crime system under the guise of The Green Hornet. However, rather than going out as the obvious hero, they pose as criminals in order to get closer to the bad guys. This could have been done in an interesting and realistic way that potentially could have twisted the genre in a new and inventive way. Instead, we got something derivative and uneven.

Starting from what I absolutely hated, the editing of this film is obnoxiously all over the place. It doesn't really move the story forward, and it was painfully obvious that this was an artificially made film. Danny Elfman's score is the usual cheesy nonsense that we shouldn't be expected to care about. Michel Gondry does bring some visual flair to the table, but his usual method of filmmaking doesn't fit the film right. The film should've been something slightly darker than it was, and I know I shouldn't take it seriously, but I wanted to. There was potential there, and it was unfortunately wasted. The dialogue was amongst the worst I've heard in Seth Rogen comedy, so it's disappointing even on that end.

Speaking of Rogen, I just didn't care about his character in the slightest. I could tell from the opening that this wasn't going to be somebody who we can actually get behind as the hero. He's a snotty rich boy asshole who doesn't do anything right, and everything that comes out of his mouth is arrogant bullshit. He's kind of the Armond White of the superhero community. Meanwhile, Jay Chou is passable as Kato, but his accent was really thick and I couldn't understand it at times. I know I shouldn't complain about that, seeing as I was could understand Jeff Bridges and Ken Watanabe perfectly in True Grit and Inception respectively, but I had too much trouble with Chou's words. James Franco gave a hilarious cameo at the start of the film, and every scene with Christoph Waltz is gripping and entertaining. The scene between Franco and Waltz set a standard for the rest of the film to live up to, and it just didn't. The final action sequence was pretty exciting, and I'll give the film that. I just wish The Green Hornet had been living at that level for the entire film.

D-