Hardcore Henry (2015)

What would it feel like if an entire film unfolded only through the protagonist’s eyes? This work stakes everything on that single, simple yet reckless idea. Every scene we see on screen is exactly Henry’s field of vision, and only his hands and feet occasionally appear at the bottom of the frame while his face never shows at all to the very end. Playing like one giant action game you control yourself, this film is an experiment bound to divide opinion to the extremes. Yet there is no denying the sheer tenacity with which that experiment is pushed all the way through.

What it’s about — A faceless cyborg’s mission to rescue his wife

The story begins with the protagonist Henry waking up in a laboratory. He has been revived as a cyborg with mechanical limbs, his memory lost, and a woman named Estelle who calls herself his wife greets him. But the calm lasts only a moment, for a villain with superpowers named Akan storms in, abducts Estelle, and begins hunting Henry. Unable to speak, Henry runs and fights endlessly to save his wife. Along the way a mysterious helper named Jimmy keeps reappearing in various guises, and this figure’s secret forms the twist of the latter half. The plot is simple, but that simplicity serves as a foothold for the form of first-person action.

Direction — First-person shot with body-mounted cameras

Everything about this film begins from the form of the first-person perspective. Director Ilya Naishuller strapped specially built camera rigs onto his own body to capture every moment of running, leaping, and fighting at the protagonist’s eye level. As a result the frame shakes and sprints ceaselessly, never letting the audience sit still for an instant. Chases, gunfights, falls, and brawls follow almost without pause, and this sense of speed is the film’s very identity.

This intense form, however, comes with a clear cost. Because the frame shakes so rapidly, more than a few viewers feel motion sickness, and the first-person constraint makes it hard to invest emotionally in the protagonist. As a film that stakes everything on the intensity of the experience rather than the depth of the story, there is also a clear fatigue, as if enduring one long action sequence. Even so, in that it created a wholly new sensation that could never have emerged from conventional film grammar, the attempt is plenty interesting.

Performance — Sharlto Copley’s ever-transforming Jimmy

Because the protagonist Henry is a figure with neither face nor voice, in effect it is the bodies of the camera-bearing stunt team, rather than acting, that take the lead. So the weight of performance in this film rests on the supporting cast. At its center is Sharlto Copley. Playing the helper Jimmy, he appears each time as a figure of entirely different appearance and personality, breathing vitality into the film. His free transformations, from a stern soldier to a wry oddball, are the greatest pleasure that lends variety to what could be a monotonous progression.

The actor playing the villain Akan unhesitatingly pushes an exaggerated, superpowered baddie, and Haley Bennett as Estelle carries the film’s emotional axis even within limited screen time. The characters are drawn somewhat cartoonishly, but that exaggeration actually suits the game-like tone of the film well.

What the film says — A declaration that puts sensation before story

This work is not a film trying to convey some grand theme. If one must seek a meaning, its purpose lies in testing just how far the medium of film can give the audience a direct experience. It is one bold answer to the question of whether the first-person immersion that action games long offered could be carried onto the screen. The very choice to put sensation before narrative, experience before meaning, is itself the film’s declaration.

Ratings and reception

This film holds a 6.7 on IMDb, a Rotten Tomatoes freshness of 51 percent, and a Metacritic score of 51 out of 100. As the scores reveal, opinion split precisely down the middle. One side prized the novelty and energy of the form, while the other pointed to the nausea-inducing imagery and thin story, the two squaring off evenly. What is clear is that this film stands right at the center of love-it-or-hate-it, and that very fact makes it a hard-to-forget experiment.

Verdict

It is hard to call this a film of flawless craft. The story is thin, and the fatigue the form imposes is no small thing. Yet its reckless challenge to widen the limits of what film can offer as experience, and the consistency with which it pushes that across all 97 minutes without wavering, deserve applause. For viewers who want to experience a new sensation, films that deliver this clear a jolt are rare. To that boldness and follow-through I give a rating of ★4.0.

Recommended for

• Those who want to enjoy an intense, experiential film like a first-person game
• Those interested in experimental attempts that break from conventional action grammar
• Those who can endure a relentless, non-stop sense of speed