Three years ago, then still a video maker, Ilya Naishuller created a video for his band Biting Elbows. Due to the non-standard manner of filming, he scored 30 million views in less than a month. In addition to abundant bloodshed and sharp postpunk, Naishuller’s work stood out among similar products as camera work. During the viewing, the viewers got the impression that the camera is attached to the forehead of a reckless extremal - a parkourist-runner who performs tricks to music. After some time, the successful domestic producer Timur Bekmambetov contacted the clip maker , who, evaluating the prospect of innovation, suggested that Naisuller remove the full-length film in the same manner.
Judgment of Western Experts
Initially, Ilya doubted the viability of the idea itself, but could not resist the temptation to show the whole spectrum of its extraordinary talent. Reviews of the film "Hardcore" position the film as a debut international project with invited foreign and Russian movie stars. Three years after the completion of the filming process, a picture that visited Canada at a film festival in Toronto, Sweden and the United States reached the Russian Federation.
The film "Hardcore" reviews abroad, in the foreign press, received diverse, the average rating, according to Rotten Tomatoes, is 5.3 / 10. Forbes, Variety, The Daily Beast, and The Hollywood Reporter contributed positively to the project. The cinema experts Popular Mechanics and The Guardian spoke negatively about the picture, in their opinion, Naishuller’s attempt to refresh the action genre was unsuccessful, since it does not have a coherent intriguing plot and characters worthy of attention. In foreign publications and domestic film "Hardcore" reviews, the rating is different. For example, the tape rating according to IMDb version: 6.80, and according to Russian releases 7.20.
"From the first person"
Russian film critics were more supportive in evaluating the novelty. Reviews of foreigners about the film "Hardcore" did not affect their opinion. The groundbreaking action movie has received mostly positive reviews and enthusiastic reviews. Experts praised the creators for the riot of energy, originality, staging and fighting scenes. Some filmmakers, analyzing "Hardcore", posted reviews of the film neutral, skeptically discussing the primitiveness of the storyline and the similarity of the film project to video games of the first-person shooter genre.
The action movie really looks like a computer game with the same “first-person” perspective, when the performer plays the main role in the role of the operator.
The opinion of the creators
The director and scriptwriter in one person, Ilya Naishuller, is convinced that the reviews of the movie "Hardcore" cannot be neutral, the reviewer will not be able to have an intermediate opinion. The one who looks will remain either in wild delight, or will remain perplexed. In his interviews, he noted that most of all the creators would like the viewer to leave the hall with the feeling that he had never seen anything like this before, so he would like to see it again. The main task of the film crew, according to the director, was the production of such a product, which would beg for several views.
Cheeky experiment
"Hardcore" is a film, reviews in the West which have been extolled to the skies for the uniqueness of the shooting style. The world film industry has no analogues, so the picture is worth looking at least out of interest. At the same time, the tape quite actively quotes the canonical representatives of the genre, full of all kinds of references.
Due to episodes of extreme cruelty and the presence of relatively innocent erotica, the film "Hardcore" reviews, the rating is from the category of "18+". Individual users, leaving reviews, do not hesitate in expressions at all. At the same time, according to the definition of filmmakers, the target audience of the action movie is young people 13-17 years old, because it has everything they need: inexorable movement, a minimum of words, testosterone and adrenaline. At the same time, according to Western critics, the tape to some extent helps maintain the stereotype of the Russian Federation as a state of total lawlessness, but the film does it so famously and charmingly that compatriots do not experience anything other than patriotism.
Plot
The protagonist Henry comes to life in the laboratory. Scientists from his crippled corpse created a cyborg who does not remember anything about his past life. One of the researchers at Estelle (Haley Bennett) tells Henry that he, her ex-spouse, and all the transformations with his body were made at the expense of the criminal element Akan (Danil Kozlovsky), whose goal is to create an army of super-soldier cyborgs. At that moment, the criminal himself breaks into the laboratory with his minions and kidnaps Estelle. Henry, having dealt with the villains of the villain, goes in search of his wife. The mysterious personality of Jimmy (Charlto Copley) helps him in this, appearing each time in a new guise, dying and resurrecting over and over again.
The story is not new, so the reviews about the movie "Hardcore" deservedly call the action movie storyline secondary.
Acting Ensemble
The indisputable advantage of an action movie is its cast. The starry placer of celebrities, including foreign ones, appears in the frame with enviable constancy. The number of cameos pleasantly surprises: Kirill Serebrennikov in the tank, Alexander Pal with a flamethrower at the ready, Sergey Shnurov as a human shield - and this is not the whole list of show business stars to be seen.
The role of the protagonist Henry as a whole was performed by more than ten people, but there were only two main actors. The spouse of the director, the domestic film actress Daria Charusha, in addition to being reincarnated as one of the prostitutes, composed music for the Hardcore project. The film, the actors reviews about their game in which they received favorable, it is worth watching because of the brilliant acting.
Two large stars
Naturally, one cannot fail to mention the contribution to the project of two significant movie stars. Despite the fact that the antagonist, telepath Akan, turned out to be a stereotypical character, the performer of his role, Danila Kozlovsky, was unusually good in this role and somehow resembled Jason Isaacs in the role of Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter epic. The caricatured, but rather funny antihero with demonic eyes and luxurious snow-white hair to the shoulders will certainly be remembered by the viewer. Watching Kozlovsky villainously smile while broadcasting about his global plans to take over the world is an amazing and immensely amusing sight.
So that the viewer is not tired of endless dizzying stunts and bloody battle scenes, the creators saturated the story with a fair amount of humor. In the movie, it is almost entirely built around Jimmy - the hero of Charlo Copley, who became famous after participating in the films “District No. 9”, “Elysium” and “Maleficent”. The actor does not take charisma, so his hero turned out to be versatile and intriguing. If the central character is somewhat similar to Gordon Freeman, then Jimmy is identical to Captain Price from the Call of Duty series.
Skeptical remarks
Negative reviews of the movie "Hardcore" equate the advantages of the tape to the disadvantages. The creators managed to immerse the viewer in what is happening at 100%. But due to the fact that the main character is an operator involved in action scenes, the picture is constantly blurred and shaking. In the end, it crashes even those who are not prone to seasickness. An additional component that prompts you to think before viewing is the individual attitude of the individual to cruelty. The director does not stand on ceremony with the characters: stomachs open on the screen, ruin the chest, knock out the eyes. Moralists should not recommend a tape for viewing, the project relates to poetry of a low genre. The director revels in the technical component and all kinds of hand-to-hand combat.
A pioneering project worth dating
Watching the action movie "Hardcore" is like watching a computer game progress. Only not an intellectual and complex RPG, but not losing relevance of a furious “shooter” in which all cut scenes are needed only to justify the next battle at the next level. The plot narrative is secondary and primitive, however, this should be the film, which was shot as a continuous demonstration of harsh action scenes. It was not without reason that the film was still awarded the audience’s prize in the program “Midnight Madness” of the Toronto Film Festival. And therefore it is at least strange to read the claims of individual film critics who scourge the innovative technical action movie for the lack of a dramatic component.