* * Stars | Thriller. R. 90 minutes.
As a formal and technical achievement, “Hardcore Henry” is almost virtuosic. Shot entirely on GoPro cameras attached to the heads of a dozen stuntmen, it delivers its herky-jerky story of a souped-up bionic man on the run — if “story” is even the right word here — using a point of view that’s reminiscent of a first-person-shooter video game, for all the right and wrong reasons.
In other words, it’s like watching a 90-minute YouTube session of “Call of Duty” crossed with the 1970s TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man,” and with a little esprit of the viral “Damn Daniel” video thrown in for good measure. (The titular hero, somewhat oddly, spends an inordinate amount of time looking at his own shoes, apparently as a way of reminding viewers that there’s a real person, albeit a cyborgian one, attached to the camera.)
When we meet Henry, he’s laid out on a gurney in some flying medical lab hovering above Moscow — a man missing an arm and a leg. As we learn later, his head is so badly traumatized that his eyes are video cameras. Although he gets two new mechanical limbs, he has no memory or speaking voice, since the laboratory is stormed by evildoers just as his communication module is about to be installed, rendering him as mute as the strong, silent and morally opportunistic antihero of “Grand Theft Auto III.”
The head evildoer, Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), wants Henry for his army of half-human, halfmachine cyber-goons, although why he would need him is unclear, seeing as Akan possesses telekinetic powers rivaling those of Magneto, or Voldemort. The rest of the movie consists of Henry trying to rescue the woman he has been told is his wife (Haley Bennett) from Akan’s thugs, who kidnap her after the pair land, with a sickening crash, on a Moscow highway in an escape pod.
Henry is aided in this mission by a mysterious man named Jimmy (Sharlto Copley, the film’s greatest nontechnical asset).
“Hardcore Henry” undoubtedly will find partisans among those whose senses of perception have become attuned to the kinetic, if not frenetic, rhythms of gaming and the satisfaction derived from racking up hundreds of kills, while ignoring such traditional values as character and motivation. All others are likely to need a Dramamine for the motion sickness.
