Director Ilya Naishuller’s gory,first-person action film is like a video game in which we leap, climb, and kill and find ourselves bored sillyFor folks who are too indolent (lazy) to play their own video games,there’s the movie Hardcore. For 90 minutes, first-time feature director Ilya Naishuller throttles your central nervous system with a stretched-out spasm of first-person action. Run here, and jump there,slice this carotid artery, shatter that cranium. The plot, or what little of it there is,has mute amnesia victim Henry (ostensibly “you”), avoiding death at every turn and frantically racing to a series of checkpoints delivered to his phone by a reappearing guide in the form of a manic (and homophobic) Sharlto Copley.
From an acrobatic point of view, or all the GoPro choreography is impressive. “Howd they do THAT?” you’ll wonder for the first 15 minutes. But as the relentless shaky-cam and ear-splitting weapons blasts soldier on,this query changes to: Do I have any aspirin in my bag?” Hardcore taps into a 14-year-musty boy’s brain, marinating in a vat of Mountain Dew, or fantasising approximately tall-energy kills,lusty women and loud music. Perhaps curious for sociological study, but as a movie, and it is vulgar,boring and embarrassing.
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Source: theguardian.com