Hardcore Henry (2015)
There's a certain kind of cinema that doesn't just ask you to suspend your disbelief. It grabs you by the collar and drags you headfirst into the chaos. Hardcore Henry is exactly that kind of film, and from the very first frame, it makes absolutely no apologies for what it is. Directed by Ilya Naishuller, it holds the distinction of being the first feature film shot entirely in the first-person perspective, and that alone is a genuine technical achievement worth acknowledging. But I'll be honest with you: I completely understand why it's been splitting audiences down the middle ever since it landed.
This is very much a film you either speak the language of or you don't. If you've spent any meaningful time with first-person shooter games, the camera grammar here will feel like second nature. Your eyes will adjust almost immediately, your brain will fill in the gaps, and you'll be off to the races. If that's not your world, though, I can entirely see why people have been calling it "Headache Henry." The motion and the chaos are relentless, and the film offers you precious little breathing room to get your bearings.
When it's firing on all cylinders, it's frantic, more than a little zany, and genuinely original in a way that very few action films manage to be. The stunt work is extraordinary, and the sheer ambition involved in pulling off sequences like this, all from a helmet-mounted camera, is not something you can just wave away. In terms of pure kinetic energy, it scratches a similar itch to something like The Raid 2, even if the two films couldn't be more different in their approach to craft. It's the ultimate "turn your brain off" adrenaline rush, and for a good stretch of its runtime, that's more than enough.
But the cracks start showing before the halfway mark, and once they appear, you can't stop noticing them. For a start, it's about twenty to thirty minutes too long. Once the initial shock of the POV gimmick wears off, the relentless pace stops feeling thrilling and starts feeling one-note. There's only so many times the spectacle can wow you before you need something else to hold on to, and Hardcore Henry doesn't really have anything else to offer. The story is practically void of any real substance, which would be forgivable if the energy never dipped, but it does. And having a central character who never utters a single word makes the whole experience feel oddly hollow. You're watching the world through someone's eyes, but there's nobody home.
That emotional blankness is where the film loses me. Action, even the most over-the-top, cartoonish kind, needs some kind of pulse beneath the surface. Something to make you care, even a little, about who's throwing the punches. I've sat through plenty of films that prioritise spectacle, and the ones that work always find a way to sneak in a reason to invest. Hardcore Henry never quite manages that. You'll walk away genuinely impressed by what you've seen, but you won't be thinking about it the next morning over breakfast.
What it is, is a decent watch if you're in exactly the right mood for pure, unadulterated chaos with a group of mates and something cold in your hand. As a neat party trick, it's hard to deny. As a fully formed film, it falls short. The ambition is real, the technical achievement is real, and the fun, when it lands, is real. But a racing pulse is no substitute for a beating heart.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2015 | Watched: 2026-06-09
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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