In 2008, David Gordon Green, noted director of acclaimed dramatic films like George Washington and All the Real Girls, took a break from deep emotional material and instead made a delightful action comedy called Pineapple Express starring Seth Rogen. This was not a film for all tastes but for many it was a rollicking good time, a charmingly ramshackle saga of guns, ganja and greed that managed to balance its stoner silliness with some wild action setpieces. Seth Rogen and his screenwriting partner Evan Goldberg tried to make lightning strike again three years later by keeping the green theme and acquiring another acclaimed cinematic helmer, visual wizard Michel Gondry, the man behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and some of the greatest music videos of all time. But Gondry proves well out of his depth, and The Green Hornet ends up feeling simultaneously sluggish and weightless.
Seth Rogen plays spoiled rich kid Britt Reid, son of emotionally unavailable newspaper magnate James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), who has just died and left his entire empire to his petulant offspring. Britt’s first move is to fire the entire staff, but immediately misses his spectacular morning coffee, and sends out to reobtain the person behind the glorious java, a man named Kato (Jay Chou) who turns out to be his father’s mechanic. Britt and Kato become friends based on their mutual distaste with Britt’s father, and bond over an immature prank (cutting the head off his father’s statue). But just then, they spot a couple being mugged, and although Britt is no help, Kato springs into action and incapacitates the whole gang, giving Britt an idea: with Kato’s skills and Britt’s access, they should fight crime! But they need to be seen as another villain to surprise bad guys, so Britt sets about mythologizing himself in his newly acquired newspaper, and utilizing the unwitting criminology skills of their attractive new secretary (Cameron Diaz), begins enacting their plan, infuriating all manner of local criminal, especially big boss Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz).
There’s a lot of potential appeal in this story of the Green Hornet: he’s really sort of an anti-superhero, not because he makes questionable moral decisions, just because he’s inept. That’s an intriguing take, but the film’s pace as it sets up its pretty straightforward plot strands, is so lethargic and lifeless that it never really gains any traction or momentum. It never really becomes a chore, but it just drags something fierce, hindered further by the lack of any particular laugh lines. There are occasional smirks, but there’s pretty much a complete lack of real guffaws or memorable gags. Pineapple Express has a similar haze but its simmering burn doles out really funny moments at a regular clip. Plus, the film’s meandering through-line was built into the very framework of the material, something that can’t be said about Green Hornet, which tries to create excitement through comedy and action and doesn’t really succeed in either.
I actually forgot Gondry was Green Hornet‘s director until the closing credits, and thinking back on the film as a whole, the only thing that really smacks of his participation is the fight scenes, which contain the sort of multiplication visuals he has shown affinity towards, but like pretty much everything else in the film, those setpieces just feel sort of sloppy and ill-considered. Kato is given a supernatural ability to identify weapons and weak points, and can physically move faster than every criminal, and yet it’s never particularly visually impressive. It’s passable the first time it happens, and then nothing more interesting ever comes of it, it’s merely something to get them out of troubling situations.
Also sloppy is the characterization, where characters like potentially corrupt district attorney Scanlon (David Harbour) just sort of wander in at random intervals and get treated as important pieces of the plot. The other two major characters here, Cameron Diaz’s secretary and Christoph Waltz’s crime boss, are handled equally ineptly: Diaz’s role is an awkward shoehorn, and Diaz plays it like she can’t wait to go do something else at another location. I’m happy Waltz has been given more roles after his starmaking turn in Inglourious Basterds, but his Chudnofsky has absolutely none of Hans Landa’s simpering menace, despite all the violence he enacts. Pineapple Express‘s villain, drug lord Ted Jones (played by Gary Cole) was clearly a comedic character, but he was never a straight cartoon, and despite all the double-barrel murders, Chudnofsky never rises to a level of existability, and slowly degenerates into a lame-punchline machine.
There was so much possibility for this to be, if not amazing, at least quite entertaining. Michel Gondry is a super-talented director, Seth Rogen is a wonderful comedian, Christoph Waltz makes a great villain, Cameron Diaz an appealing love interest, and The Green Hornet an appealing commodity. But it’s difficult to do a hybrid film like a superhero comedy, and either you’re going to dissolve the action tension by leaning on the comedy, or forget to be charming while you’re throwing out violence. Hornet clearly sold out to the comedy side, but with leaden pacing and little in the way of genuine notable amusement, The Green Hornet is about as successful cinematically as the ’60s Batman TV show, and by that I mean, it’s mediocre as hell. BLAM!
[Grade: 5.5/10 (C+/C) / #2 (of 3) of 2011]
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