"THIS IS WAR BABY"

Hardcore Henry is the type of loud, vulgar, nonsensical action movie that does not give a flying fuck what you think. And I loved every deranged second of it. Seriously, when I say nonsensical, I really do mean nonsensical. Very little of what happens in Hardcore Henry makes sense. The biggest example of that being the villain having telekinetic powers that aren't explained even slightly. He just has them because Hardcore Henry, and that's all the explanation you need.

However, this all seems par for the course given the type of movie that is being presented to us. You can tell Naishuller was inspired by the work of Neveldine and Taylor, most notably the Crank movies. This is shown in how Hardcore Henry always finds a way to keep the story and the action moving forward by any means necessary at a breakneck pace without it becoming grading to watch.

This said constant breakneck pace that permeates Hardcore Henry works perfectly with how it is filmed. At first, the constant first person perspective looks like it would get tiring or even nauseating after a while. However, this isn't necessarily the case. The constant change up in action set pieces keeps the viewing experience interesting. And while Naishuller doesn't imbue any deeper meaning or intent behind Hardcore Henry's first person perspective like Khalfoun did with his 2013 remake of Maniac, but he doesn't need to as Naishuller makes it perfectly clear what kind of movie we are watching. However, it depends on the person you are that determines if you will find it nauseating or not. See, I'm a big gamer and have been playing a lot of Fallout 4 recently and have a history of playing games likes Mirror's Edge and Dying Light, two games that it would be fair to compare Hardcore Henry to, so the first person perspective didn't bother me in the slightest. Furthermore, if you're a gamer too, I don't see why you would find it problematic. However, if you don't game that much or get motion sickness, I can see you getting slightly queasy at certain points during the film.

I know it's been brought up by everyone and their mother when talking about Hardcore Henry, but it really does feel like you are watching a video game play-through in the cinema, with the experience probably being enhanced while watching at home. This is the kind of trashy action movie that appeals greatly to me, something about watching a coked up version of something else is greatly appealing to me and shows that filmmakers need to take more risks with out their concepts like this one.