Film Review | The Green Hornet

’m a bit tired of writing about superhero films. From their staggered rise in the late 90s, to the mid-noughties boom and utter saturation point now, I personally think it’s time for them to call it quits. Now that the technology is advanced enough to render our favourite spandex-clad crimefighters into something that looks decent in live action, they’re no longer a triumph, and the tropes have been repeated too many times for us to care.

You see, there was a time when superhero films had to work hard – before X-Men, Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan’s stratospherically popular (and critically acclaimed) revamp of the Batman saga (which will be culminating in 2012 with The Dark Knight Rises; Anne Hathaway was confirmed as Selina Kyle/Catwoman this week). Now studios are comfortable to churn out rubbish like The Green Hornet and expect us to care – as if the tacked-on 3D makes up for its uninspired, lazy storytelling that, apart from everything else, far from deserves its two-hours-plus running time.

The plot, such as it is, runs like so: Britt (Seth Rogen) is the spoilt, playboy son of newspaper magnate James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), whose Seattle Sentinel prides itself in being the last bastion of hard-nosed investigative journalism in the city.

When James is (supposedly) felled by an allergic reaction to a bee sting, Britt is left to run the newspaper… a task which he feels neither up to nor particularly keen on. When he encounters Kato (Jay Chou, in a role made famous by Bruce Lee), the man who used to make his father’s coffee and who turns out to be both an engineering and martial arts genius, Britt, in a drunken moment, suggests they both vandalise the statue erected to his recently deceased father… as it transpires that neither Britt nor Kato liked the man very much.

But while in the act of decapitating the memorial, the duo come across a couple being assaulted by thugs and foolishly decide to intervene.

The operation doesn’t exactly go smoothly, but they succeed,  largely thanks to Kato’s physical prowess. This gives Britt an idea – what if they team up and play vigilante, under the guise of criminals? Using his newfound power as a media authority, Britt begins to spin the Green Hornet legend.

However, as the city’s most notorious gangster Benjamin Chudnovsky (Inglourious Basterds’ Christoph Waltz) catches wind of the new kid on the block, things start to get messy, leading our duo to realise that they might just have bitten more than they can chew.
The ‘repentant socialite becomes superhero’ thing has been done with greater style and panache in the Iron Man films (even if the sequel staggered along a bit too much, it was a far more polished offering than this) – and despite the fact that music video auteur Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) was at the helm of The Green Hornet, a lot of it just feels like a passionless re-tread of old, old ground.

But you can pretty much smell the potential from the resulting debris: combine Gondry’s zesty, indie style with Rogen’s infamous slacker-smut barrage and you have yourself a charming little winner, right? Well… I suppose so, if it had been done right, with a minimum of studio interference and with greater care to plotting, character and choreography.

As it is, everything is just diluted: the comedy has to take a back seat to the action, while the action itself fails to deliver because neither Gondry or Rogen particularly care about making it thrilling. Both Rogen’s Pinapple Express and Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind had jokey crime thriller and superhero references, and made light of them. But you can’t expect an unripe gag to carry an entire film – if you’re going to change the rules around, go for it with a steady burst of punky energy: slackerdom that yields to authority anyway does not a fine concoction make (see Kick-Ass for a good lesson in how to both deconstruct and take advantage of the pleasures of superherodom at the same time).

But for me, the greatest tragedy of the entire farce remains the tragically miscast Waltz. After a masterful turn in Tarantino’s latest (which won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), he deserves way better than this – at least give him a real character to play, as opposed to, once again, a gag taken way too far.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the 3D is pretty much useless too.