What's the cheat code that turns 'Hardcore Henry' into a goo

What's the cheat code that turns 'Hardcore Henry' into a good movie?

Many movie critics say “It’s like a video game” like it’s a bad thing. The makers of “Hardcore Henry” might take that as a badge of honor.

The ultraviolent action film expressly tries to emulate the experience of playing a video game, specifically a first-person shooter like “Doom” or “Call of Duty.” Nearly the entire movie is shot from the main character’s first-person perspective, as if the camera was embedded in his forehead. When Henry kicks somebody, we see his leg lash out as if it was ours. When he punches somebody (which happens a lot), there's a glimpse of his/our snake-tattooed forearms.

The allusions to a video game don’t stop there; “Hardcore Henry” is structured as a series of environment-based missions — the Rooftop Level, the Laboratory Level, the Brothel Level. Each level has tons of bad guys to kill in all sorts of creative ways, as well as a few Big Bosses to vanquish. A mentor/sidekick character common to video games keeps the story going, doling out just enough information to keep the hero on track and getting him to the next level. Even the title “Hardcore Henry” sounds like a video game franchise like “Duke Nukem” or “Serious Sam.”

The character you “play” is Henry, first in a line of tricked-out cyborg warriors developed by the villainous Azan (Danila Kozlovsky, who seems like a platinum-blonde version of Tommy Wiseau from “The Room”.) Henry and his scientist wife Estelle (Haley Bennett) escape Azan’s lab — which happens to be flying about 10,000 feet above Moscow. When Azan kidnaps Estelle, Henry storms through the city trying to find her.

The action scenes are shot using GoPro cameras for you-are-there immediacy. When Henry rappels down the side of an office building or throws down with dozens of bad guys in white (the better to show the blood), you’re right there. This works like gangbusters for pell-mell chase scenes, like a foot chase through the streets (and over a bridge) in Moscow, because the action is clean and linear and propulsive.

But the gunfights and fistfights are cluttered and chaotic, the camera whipping back and forth as Henry dispatches one opponent after another after another. Like watching a friend play Xbox while waiting for your turn, it gets pretty boring after a while seeing everything from the same angle. Perhaps sensing the novelty has peaked in the first hour, writer-director Ilya Naishuller amps up the gore for the final fight, in which heads are torn off, chests are ripped open, eyeballs are impaled and gallons of blood spilled everywhere. If you’re into that sort of thing.

“Hardcore Henry” does display some quick flashes of humor along the way, such as a very funny moment when Henry tries to ride a wild horse. Unfortunately, none of them come from Sharlto Copley (“District 9”), who plays that mentor/sidekick named Jimmy, who appears randomly to offer advice, gets killed, and then somehow reappears later in a different guise. It’s a grating performance, although a good approximation of most over-the-top video game acting.

It’s strange that a movie essentially casting the audience as the main character would be so disengaging. Video games are by design immersive experiences. I played more than my share a decade or two ago, and it amazes me now how easily “Battlefield 1942” or “Doom” could suck you in, these little collections of colored pixels provoking adrenaline surges of fear or frustration or triumph. Хардкор http://www.alcomex.nl/%D1%85%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80-2016-watch-hardcore-henry-free