The Green Hornet

The Green Hornet - 119min – PG-13

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, a rich kid slacker who inherits his father’s(Tom Wilkinson) estate and is now in charge of his father’s newspaper. While taking revenge on his father’s image he and Kato (Jay Chou) stop a crime in progress. Britt is changed by this experience and now wants to use his resources to become a superhero. Not just any superhero, a superhero that is pretending to be a bad guy to cover up his heroic activities. With the help of Kato and Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), Britt works through his team to take over the territory of the current crime lord Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz).

I have never watched or knew anything about the original stories, I have heard a few old radio programs but I think they did a good job of representing the characters and the story. I was not lost because of my lack of historical knowlage. This is a great action hero film. I enjoyed 95% of it. I would say the only parts that were hard to watch were Seth’s tomfoolery with the main character. In many scenes Seth’s attempt to overpower a joke with uncomfortable humor took the jokes over the top. A prime example of this is a scene that was in the trailer. Brit wakes up from being knocked out by his own hand with the gas gun, and then takes out his frustrations with the situation on Kato by gassing him in the face. This interaction could have been better served if the two had not had a poorly constructed moment between them where Brit realizes he has been out for several days not a few hours. The interactions between the two would have been fine without dragging out the joke. There is an uncomfortable moment where Britt implies he is surprised that Lenore a woman of declining age would be applying herself to her pursuits, um… She is still hot and does not look like a woman in her twilight. Despite Seth’s playing his character over the top the overall movie experience was still ok. One actor I really liked is Edward James Olmos. Edward played Axford, the second in command at the newspaper. Olmos never disappoints as an actor. I felt the main bad guy was a bit weak, we know Christoph can play a menacing villain from his work in Inglorious Bastards. I don’t know why this character was not as good as his previous one. There is a funny bit where his character has an identity crisis that perhaps his is not as menacing as the Hornet so he decides to reinvent himself, but the change seems to fall flat. Cameron Diaz is good as a supporting character that is the brains of the partnership. Lenore is the organization, Seth is the face man and Kato does all the heavy lifting with the crime fighting.

The film was good in 2D I did not see it in 3D but I can’t see a specific reason it needed to be in 3D. The credits were done to play to the 3D effects but overall in the film it did not seem to play to the fact it had a 3D version out there, no one was pointing to the screen or things were not flying at the camera. I would say it was fine as a 2D picture. There were some creative editing on a long shot that was sped up to let us see time pass, this shot seemed out of place for this kind of film, as a style it should have made a reoccurrence but it was only used once at the beginning. The movie kept me involved to where I did not notice any other gaps in the filming of this movie. Overall a well made film and they need to pull in the reins on Seth’s asshattery and you might really have something here. A go see movie even if it is at a matinee.