Z/Web

Author: Michael Gondry

I was fully prepared to hate this movie. The trailers gave me little hope: it seemed like a feeble attempt at comedy, and the whole concept of this particular superhero was missing. I also kept confusing this with The Green Lantern, another superhero movie coming out this summer. To my surprise, I really liked this film! It’s wonderful. The director shoots it in an interesting manner, with fun little quirky touches that don’t overwhelm but do make things more interesting. The plot is simple and slight, but I actually liked that. It’s really just an origin story and I like my origin stories pure. Too may of these kinds of movies try to do both an origin and a regular adventure plot at the same time and the result is that neither storyline is satisfactory. The origin of the Green Hornet is interesting. I’d actually forgotten until I read recently that this character started out as a radio play way back when (along with the Lone Ranger and The Shadow). This character is not actually a superhero: he’s more like Batman in that he’s just a regular guy. He’s also unusual in that he’s not that super: his sidekick, Kato, is the actual hero. The main guy’s just the motivator and image. (The concept reminds me (a little) of the team of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, where one guy’s the actual electronics genius and the other provides the marketing and charisma. Neither would have succeeded without the skills of the other.) The other thing I really like about the concept of this character is how he’s actually perceived by the police and criminals as a bad guy. Everyone thinks the Green Hornet is a criminal. The logic behind this is that as a criminal he can get closer to the bad guys and stop their plans. If the crooks know he’s a hero, they’ll try and stop him or take advantage of his good nature to hurt innocent people. But since the criminals think he’s a bad guy, they assume that he doesn’t care about innocent people and thus can’t use that as a weapon against him. Genius! The drawback, of course, is that he’s hunted by both revengeful crooks and the police, but that’s a minor price to pay.

Now this particular version of the story changes things a little bit and does make it more comical. Seth Rogan plays the Green Hornet and he fits his role as a useless playboy to a T. I love the way Kato was slowly brought into the story, the way Seth’s character slowly gets into the superhero business, and the way the two bicker and fight but ultimately become best friends. Seth’s character isn’t much a hero, but he has a good heart, and it’s his idealism that that motivates Kato who would never have thought of dressing up in costume and stopping bad guys. That’s just the kind of thing a soft, spoiled, and bored rich kid would dream up. While I can see how some people wouldn’t like this story — not a lot happens — I really liked it. I admire the restraint and subtlety and I like the careful pacing so that characters don’t suddenly change overnight but gradually become superheroes. It helps that there’s plenty of humor to keep us entertained, and some decent (though over-the-top) action late on. The villain is marvelously played by Christoph Waltz (from Inglourious Basterds) in a wonderful role as a bad guy who is overly concerned with what people think of him. The plot simply consists of him, as the town’s leading bad dude, becoming jealous of the publicity the Green Hornet’s getting and trying to kill him. It gets a little muddled with a whole corrupt politician angle, but overall is a simple plot that gets out of the way so we can focus on the Seth becoming the Green Hornet. I’m sure future movies in this series (assuming they are bad) would have a more conventional action plot and that will be fine.

Overall, this is not up to the level of the amazing The Dark Knight, but it’s solid and surprisingly watchable. The comedy is light and appropriate. A few things don’t work or fall awkwardly (some of the adult language felt really out of place in what feels like a movie appropriate for youngsters), and some of the fighting between the two main characters went too far as we want them to be friends, but the bottom line is that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. That surprised me as I was really expecting to write a scathing commentary. Recommended!