While scheming up his vigilante alter ego, Britt Reid, the man behind the mask in The Green Hornet, muses to his sidekick that the crime-ridden streets of Los Angeles need more than a mere superhero.
“The city needs our help,” he declares. “We could be heroes! We will pose as villains to get closer to the bad guys. That way, no one will suspect we’re really the good guys!”
Evoking Batman’s similarly-minded decision to be “whatever Gotham needs me to be” at the end of The Dark Knight, Reid, played by Seth Rogen with far less gravity and much less style than his dark-caped counterpart, grasps that Los Angeles needs him to play villain rather than hero. With Rogen at its core, this makes The Green Hornet, though enjoyable, far more of a comedy than a superhero flick.
Although its protagonist is a masked crime-fighter, The Green Hornet, for better or for worse, cannot truly be grouped in with the rest of the superhero movies. Although based on a late 1930s radio show and later a comic, the 2011 interpretation of The Green Hornet is pure Seth Rogen. More congruous with Pineapple Express than Iron Man or The Dark Knight, it seems Rogen hopes action will take a back seat to comedy. The movie is chock-full of one-liners, but the best comedy grows out of the many bromance moments between Reid and his stalwart sidekick, Kato (Jay Chou). Though Cameron Diaz appears as Lenore Case, Reid’s secretary and love interest, her presence only works to detract from Reid and Kato’s chemistry.
Despite its comedic elements, however, the movie maintains many of the standards of today’s ever-present comic-based superhero blockbusters—masks, sidekicks, gadgets, and explosions. Kato slows time as he targets each enemy’s weak point, incapacitating his assailants with roundhouse kicks. The Hornet’s car, the Black Beauty, finds itself in numerous chases, adding to the movie’s visual appeal. In one standout scene towards the film’s end, Kato rides the Black Beauty through a glass elevator, slicing the car in half as it careens up a skyscraper, dodging bullets and sending out showers of sparks. Requisite ejection seats launch the super-duo out of the Black Beauty and over downtown Los Angeles, as fireworks of rubble beautifully explode below them.
As a fun, albeit not incredibly intricate action movie, The Green Hornet excels. For an action-based blockbuster, the plot moves swiftly, with just enough depth to guide Kato and Reid through their adventures while avoiding what might have been a montage of explosions à la Transformers. For Seth Rogen fans, The Green Hornet is worth a watch, if only for its comedy—and maybe its exploding cars.
well stated Heather!