The Green Hornet Review
by Ronald O.Christian (ronc AT europa DOT com)January 16th, 2011
Green Hornet (2011) Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz, Edward James Olmos
2 stars out of 5
One thing my daughter and I have in common is a complete disinterest in Football. I used to sit through a game years ago when they would have occasionally glimpses of the cheerleaders, but since they don't do that anymore there's really no point, and the noise level when a game is going on is irritating.
So with wife (the football fan in the family) firmly ensconced in front of the boob tube, daughter and I fled the house for a late lunch at the local sushi track and the last matinee of Green Hornet 3D.
Firstly, there's no reason to see this film in 3D. It looks like it was shot in 2D and converted, which seems to be borne out by the credits at the end. The credits, by the way, are very imaginative and use the 3D process to good effect. The rest of the film does not.
According to the credits the film is adapted from the original 1940's radio show, but it's more properly an adaptation from the 1960's TV show. Most of the visual cues are from the 1960's show, although there are a few nods to earlier incarnations, such as the goggles Kato wears before they develop the masks.
The production design of the film is amazing. The car, costumes and devices would have looked natural in the original series had it a bigger budget and today's technology.
The weapons were an interesting combination of lethal and non-lethal, with the car capable of spraying missiles equipped with high explosives or bean bag rounds. The in-story explanation of this was that the Hornet in his role as criminal must do battle with the police as well as bad guys and had to be careful to limit the collateral damage.
Christoph Waltz plays the main villain of the piece, Chudnofski, as a curiously unassuming and self-deprecating cold blooded killer. Expecting a standard one dimensional crime boss, I was somewhat surprised at the life Waltz was able to breathe into the character.
Considering that Jay Chou didn't speak English and (at least at first) had to learn his lines phonetically, and had no previous martial arts training, he did a fantastic job as Kato, showing a unique character capable of subtle expression as well as an athletic fighter capable of kicking serious butt. I'm looking forward to seeing him in future films.
Seth Rogen was... Seth Rogen. And herein was the flaw that made the film unwatchable. A little of Rogen goes a long way. His tendency to beat a joke to death made for a large number of painful scenes that should have been reigned in by the directory or edited out later. In one adlibbed scene Rogen goes on and on and on about the age of Cameron Diaz's character while the audience looks for the emergency exits and considers checking their email. You eventually begin to feel sorry for Diaz for having to sit through the tirade and try to stay in character, and wonder how Rogen ever got a job as an actor. Rogen apparently has not yet figured out that being a jerk is only funny under very specialized circumstances. And these were not they.
This left me in a quandary. The film had the right look, a reasonable plot and an excellent supporting cast. It had well-executed nods to the radio show, the early serials and the 1960's tv show. The backstory was well thought out and the technology adequately explained. But overall, the movie stank. The good parts were any part where Seth Rogen was not speaking. Unfortunately, he babbled incessantly throughout the entire film. The lead in The Green Hornet gets my vote for Miscast of the Decade, being well aware that the decade is only 15 days old. The rest of the cast should not have had to put up with this. Two stars out of five. Would have been one but I had to add one for the Herculean efforts of the supporting cast.
My daughter (16) thought Jay Chou was really hot and that he should have taken his shirt off during the film. Multiple times. But she couldn't understand why Rogen seemed to be stuck in his character from "Knocked Up".
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