Green With Envy
This is another movie that received a fairly poor rating so I was pleasantly surprised when I actually bothered to see it on DVD. I'm only vaguely familiar with the Green Hornet, mainly because of Bruce Lee but I found myself actually liking it. It's not like traditional superhero films.
Seth Rogen (Green Hornet) comes off as vaguely directionless and somewhat obnoxious slacker who only works hard at partying. The sudden death of his father has left him in charge of a newspaper company he has no idea how to run and he is left with a lot of unresolved issues about his old man. About one of the things that I liked is how unlike a lot of other movies about how the hero's father was always painted as a great man and a saint; Rogen matter of factually proclaims that his father was "kind of an @$$hole".
Rogen sort of stumbles into his role as the Green Hornet as kind of drunken wish fulfillment and for kicks at first but he seems to soberly become aware of the importance of it as the film progresses. Jay Chou (Kato) was another real find and I particularly loved his relationship with Rogen and how Kato was the real competent half of the duo. He was the martial arts master and genius mechanic. But there was a sort of directionless in Kato too as he had all of those talents, but never bothered to use them until he ran into the Hornet. The Hornet had the vision while Kato had the ability.
Cameron Diaz proved to be much more than just a pretty face; she wasn't the token girlfriend, but had both Rogen and Chou fighting over her while they used her brains to mastermind their crimefighting strategy without her knowledge. It was an odd reversal where the girlfriend is usually just eye candy in these films.
And there's the villain! Christoph Waltz had me chuckling at a criminal mastermind who was unhappy because he wasn't being taken seriously and was constantly trying to reinvent himself as cool and evil.
The Green Hornet was a film that set all of those preconceptions of superheroes and villains on their head. The actors aside, the storyline wasn't bad and the special effects weren't too shabby either. I think this film didn't deserve the panning it received by most critics.
RATING: 4 STARS!!!!
