The Green Hornet
Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz, Tom Wilkinson
Director: Michel Gondry
Rating: 2/5
Another year, another superhero film comes out. The trouble is, who honestly remembers The Green Hornet?
The star of a 1930’s radio serial and an old TV show that was only famous for giving Bruce Lee his big break, the signs don’t look good for this masked crime fighter.
With frat-pack standout Seth Rogen on board though and visionary director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind) calling the shots, maybe there’s still sting in this bee.
The Green Hornet focuses on Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), the socialite son of newspaper owner and bastion on journalistic truth James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), whose sole purpose in life is to party hard.
After the death of his overbearing father to a bee sting, Britt decides to team up with his father’s old assistant Kato (Jay Chou), a coffee making, car building, martial arts master genius, and fight the crime of LA under the name of The Green Hornet.
The trouble is, that while in years past, The Green Hornet was a clever, debonair vigilante, now he’s just yet another Seth Rogen bumbling idiot.
Rogen’s writing finger-prints are all over this film, and critically hold it back from it ever being effective as a comedy or an action film.
None of this is helped by a completely needless subplot involving a romantic triangle with a secretary (a bored looking Cameron Diaz), a villain that never even appears threatening (a wasted Christoph Waltz playing a PG version of Hans Landa) and headache inducing awful 3D.
The star of the movie and the sole real interest, just like the TV show, is Kato. Played well by Chinese superstar Jay Chou, Kato is solely responsible for all the best fights, jokes and is easily the most interesting of these vanilla characters.
For every moment of Kato magic though, there are two moments of Rogen annoyance. Even a director of Michel Gondry’s class can’t lift this average script to anything other than slightly dull.
A wasted opportunity to bring back a hero from yester-year, The Green Hornet never really makes it out of hive.
The Green Hornet is out now.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith