Do you have low expektations? Are you annoyed by tings like logic and quality? Are you a cretin? If you answered yes to any of dese questions, den you may enjoy The Green Hornet.
Movie open on Russian gangster who visit club owned by rival. There, he make rival an offer he can’t refuse. Rival refuse it anyway, so Russian pull out carefully concealed weapon – a big, clunky twin-barreled gun. How possible for him to sneak it inside? It not make any sense! Russian kill bodyguards, make another offer, den get up and leave. As he leaving, rival notice he forgot his briefcase and say: “Hey, you forgot your briefcase!”. Seconds later – literally, dats all de time it takes for Russian to get out de office, thru de club, and out de front door – briefcase explode. It not make any sense!!
We cut to Chateau Versailles where we introduced to multi-millionaire douchebag father and his multi-millionaire douchebag son. Britt. Father is unhappy wit son’s lifestyle. He unhappier still when he supposedly get stung by bee, have allergic reaction and die. Britt take over de family business and fire entire house staff – except guy named Kato because he know which buttons to push to make great coffee. Also, Kato be a terrifik mechanic who, for some reason, tricked out Britt’s dad’s car wit all sorts of James Bond gadgetry. Why? It not make any sense!!!
One night, Britt and Kato dress up in disguise and take head off father’s memorial statue. Dey also end up stopping gang of muggers. Well, Kato stop dem. Britt just try his best not to get in de way.
Disguised Britt and Kato caught on security camera defacing father’s statue. Britt inherit father’s newspaper and insist it publish headline story on mysterious criminal defacers, one of which he name Green Hornet. Soon, everyone very interested in Green Hornet. De media, citizens, even de Russian gangster. But why? Why de heck everyone suddenly interested in some guy just because he took de head off a statue? Why powerful Russian gangster is worried about being upstaged by a costumed vandal? IT NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!
In order to decide next course of aktion, Britt have to hire self-proclaimed “criminal expert” temp to tell him what Green Hornet will do next. Using her “expert insight”, he follow her predikted pattern: beating up criminals and generally causing trouble for Russian gangster. Why Britt need to hire some temp to tell him what to do? IT NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!!
Russian try to kill Green Hornet and Kato – but dey eskape. Den have a falling out because Britt tink Kato dating temp. Den Kato tink Britt dating temp. Ho hum.
Kato accept Russian’s offer to kill Green Hornet and get de drop on Britt (after completely implausible flashback sekwence in which Britt piece together complikated backstory for benefit of confused viewer. It not make any sense by de way) – but it turn out he have no intention of killing him after all. In de end, it not really matter because, for some reason, Russian gangsters and his thugs start shooting up de place before Kato can go thru wit it. Why? IT NOT MAKE ANY FREAKIN’ SENSE!
Shoot out! Car chase! Fights! Entire floor of newspaper building destroyed but newspaper staff unaware dere be anyting going on until a half a car drive out of de elevator. IT NOT MAKE ANY FREAKIN’ SENSE!!
Bad guys killed. Britt, dressed up as Green Hornet, get shot in shoulder and eskape. But he unable to go to hospital because den police will know HE de Green Hornet. So he and Kato and temp come up wit brilliant plan: De next day, Britt give public speech – and interrupted by Kato who fake shoot him in de shoulder and drive away. Presumably, hospital staff won’t know difference between fresh and day-old gunshot wound and everyting a-okay.
Britt and Kato put head back on statue, restoring dignity to father’s legacy. Sadly, same can’t be said for Green Hornet franchise.
Verdikt: Seriously! It makes no sense!
Rating: 3 chocolate chippee cookies.
I actually enjoyed this film. Watched it for the first time about two months ago and thought it was fun. But then again, I’m easy. 🙂
Fun fact (I believe mentioned here before): In the original radio series, Britt Reid, a.k.a. The Green Hornet, is the son of the Lone Ranger’s nephew, Dan Reid.
das
“Hey, you forgot your briefcase!”. Seconds later – literally, dats all de time it takes for Russian to get out de office, thru de club, and out de front door – briefcase explode. It not make any sense!!”
That reminds me of how the star of the show always drives right up to the front of the police station or court house, etc, and parks, jumps out of car and walks right in the front door. I have to park way out in kingdom come in the parking lot. Why do they always get front door parking? That makes no sense either!
3 chocolate chippee cookies for a movie that make no sense?
Now that makes no sense.
Cookie have you heard how Akemi’s dog Bubba is?
The more I see Seth Rogan in stuff, the more I can’t stand him. In my estimation, he’s gone from Awesome, in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, to Asshole, in The Green Hornet. I don’t understand why people keep throwing tens of millions of dollars at him and his juvenile wet dream projects. Can someone explain this phenomenon to me?
I skipped this in the theatre, and boy am I glad I did. The best thing about this film is Jay Chou (Kato), but you have to put up with a lot of Seth Rogan idiocy to get your Chou fix. As Britt Reid’s confidante and partner in crime stopping, Chou is the Cato Fong to Seth Rogan’s Inspector Clouseau, meaning that Kato does all the impressive stuff (master of martial arts, genius mechanical and chemical engineer, charmer of Lenore, the love interest), while Britt is the hapless imbecile who gets in the way more than anything else and later tries to take credit for the heroics. The schtick gets old very quickly.
And “schtick” is the right word for what this movie is. Despite the seriousness with which the original Green Hornet radio serial took itself (the Los Angeles AM news radio station KNX 1070 used to (still does?) broadcast old-timey radio programs every evening, and The Green Hornet was one I used to sometimes catch on my way home from work when I lived there), this movie iteration goes for laughs, as one would expect from a Seth Rogan picture. The problem is, it’s really never funny. Britt Reid is a complete asshole of a character pretty much from start to end, his sexist, moronic antics maybe eliciting laughter from 12-year-old boys, but not from anyone with half a brain.
In a nutshell, Britt’s a rich playboy (obviously the women are attracted to his money, because, really, what else is there for them to be attracted to?) whose father was a far better newspaper owner/editor than he was a father. When the elder Reid dies unexpectedly, Britt finds himself in charge of the family business, the Daily Sentinel, and the family estate. He meets and strikes up a friendship with his father’s chauffeur and mechanic, Kato, and they swap stories of his father’s assholery as they get drunk together. They decide to go vandalize his father’s newly erected statue, and in the process, they happen to save a young couple from the most inept street gang of all time. Someone calls the cops, who chase after Britt and Kato, until the masked duo run the cop car off the road and into a storefront window. This is supposed to be a triumph. Later on, they will run another cop car into a lightpole. How heroic!
Britt then abuses his new power as owner of the Sentinel to get his reporters to cover the non-story of the vandalism (for which there is blurred surveillance footage of Britt running away from the scene), in order to pump up the idea that this new “scourge”, a.k.a. the Green Hornet, is a criminal force to be reckoned with. He does this in order to address what he sees as the Achilles Heel of all superheroes: that the bad guys know the superheroes are good guys and can just take a hostage to hold them over a barrel and make them give in. If the criminals think the Green Hornet is another criminal, Britt figures, they’ll never try that bullshit.
Well, it works. And they raise the ire of the crime boss in charge of All Crime in L.A., who vows to take care of this Green Hornet guy permanently. Hilarity ensues. Well, no, not really, but I think that’s what was supposed to happen. There’s a big criminal-gang-versus-Green-Hornet montage, an attempt to bury Britt and Kato alive in their car, a revelation that the local D.A. is in cahoots with the crime boss and was extorting Britt’s father, in order to get him to give favorable press coverage to the D.A. in time for his election campaign, a competition for the affections of Lenore, Britt’s new secretary at the Sentinel, many car chases, lots of car-mounted gadgets, and more car chases. The D.A. plunges spectacularly 40 stories to his death as the hood ornament to one half of a 65 Chrysler Imperial, and the crime boss gets doubly impaled in the head – through his eye sockets! And so concludes this charming movie.
But wait! There’s a denouement, in which Lenore learns the identity of the Green Hornet and masterminds a scheme that will allow Britt to get hospital treatment for his bullet wound while still protecting his secret identity. And Dear Old Dad’s statue gets its head back. The End.
I you haven’t seen this movie, don’t. If you have seen it, I feel your pain. In someone else’s hands besides Seth Rogan’s, this could have been a good film. The props department did an insanely impressive job with the gadgets and weaponry, and the martial artistry was fun to watch. If only the story or characters were remotely interesting! Alas, they were not.
This movie has everything you need to make a great superhero movie. Slo-mo martial arts, explosions, gun wielding baddies, gadget laden cars and witty banter. Unfortunately you also need complex and interesting characters.
Seth Rogen’s Britt is so unlikeable. As you say, Cookie, a douchebag. There was no reason for us to like this character so there was no reason for us to care what happened to him. And it wasn’t like he changed much over the course of the movie. He was still pretty much the same douchebag by the end.
I remember a lot of the publicity when this movie came out in cinemas. It all revolved around the cool car. Now I can see why. It was the only interesting thing in the movie. The movie wasn’t bad . . . it was just meh.
G’day
Saw this movie (well saw is not correct, being in same room when hubby was watching it and occasionally glancing up at the screen), a while ago.
Kato gets five stars, as for the rest…zip.
Am I a cretin? Cookie, if you don’t ask me to talk about religion, I promise I shall never bake vegan cookies for you.
Back in the day, I loved the old Green Hornet TV show. Bruce Lee! Van Williams made a decent gravely voiced, handsome hero. It was standard superhero fare, but heck – Bruce Lee! That’s why we watched it. So I was kind of looking forward to seeing the movie, in spite of the fact that they dumbed-down Britt Reid’s character and gave him to Seth Rogen. Kato was the main attraction and did not disappoint. Yeah, there was only a thin excuse for a plot and I had to watch Seth Rogen (who is not my favorite in the best of times) playing a really unappealing character, but Jay Chou’s Kato was fun. 3 cookies is probably a fair rating for the movie as a whole, but I’d give Kato an 8.
2.5 out of 3 yeses. Low expectations. Cretin. And I make lemonade when life hands me nonsense, but I’m not annoyed when it doesn’t.
I was the kid who would look at those “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” panels in the magazines and have fun making it right, like saying, “maybe the chair is glued to the wall, that’s how it can stay upright while missing two legs. Whose rule is it that birds can’t be hats? Wrong? Pshaw.” Maybe I could make sense out of this movie, but it would have to be fun work, otherwise I’d just be pissed that that was the writer’s job to make sense out of it, not mine.
Cookie, I watched the original Green Hornet with Van Williams and Bruce Lee. Also showing on tv was Star Trek: TOS. Very good shows for entertainment. 🙂
Hey Joe! Catching up after a few days off. I unplugged. No tablet, no computer. It was kind of liberating.
Sorry to hear about Bubba. I hope he’s feeling better and the wound is not serious. Hang in there Bubba!
Wow, I’m late with the posting today!
It may be just relative to the blunt force head trauma that was “Super”, but this movie didn’t strike me as all that bad. Although, I do remember when seeing it the first time a year or two ago not really caring for it at all. So I guess I would say “pretty bad, but not terrible.” Or at least not terribly terrible.
Sure the plot, such as it was, made little sense, and Seth Rogan can be the antithesis of funny and there was little consequence or thought given to some of the obvious car related deaths like those poor policemen, and… oh hell, I guess it was pretty crappy.
There were also some weird technical/physics issues with it too, like when Britt pushes the bullet out of the glass in the car during the chase and we hear the “plink” as it hits… the pavement, I guess? How would they possibly hear that during a high speed chase from within the car? Also, in another chase how does a large SUV get flipped over by just firing bullets at the rear of it? I know – “Shhhhhhh”.
Still, I did get a few chuckles out of it here and there, and I agree that the movie would have been better focusing on Kato with GH as a secondary character. That would have been an interesting perspective too – a superhero movie from the sidekick’s point of view. Oh well, like most of these movies it’s a big pile of wasted potential.
Cookie is being too generous with 3 cookies!
I see Megamind is the next movie. Loved that one! I can’t wait to see if Cookie likes it too.
Ponytail: 😆
How is Bubba boy doing today? Did he get the cone of shame?
@ Sparrowhawk – Only 8 cookies? Really? I’d give Chou’s Kato at least a 9.5…okay, who am I fooling. 10 cookies, easy. 🙂 He’s probably why I liked the movie so much.
das
Hey I saw Cookie Monster dancing with Elmo on the local fox station here in Chicago. It didn’t look like he was happy about it (maybe he was forced into it by his contract?)
On the Green Hornet, like most here, I saw Britt as simply an over-indulged spoiled jerk…not much to like about his character. Also, the ‘Suspension of Disbelief Train’ came off the rails for me when the rocket explosion in the buried car throws off a heavy piece of construction equipment, but leaves our heroes virtually unharmed. In real life the concussive force would have turned them into red jello.
On other matters Joe, how is Bubba doing? I’m hoping he is well on the mend.
Joe,
I would love to see your take on GREEN LANTERN…
I worked on that film for 5 1/2 months and loved every day on set! Ryan & Blake were amazing to work with and I was very dissapointed after editing and seeing it on seek preview, I came home and wife asked me “WELL?” I looked at her and said; the messed it all up! =/
I still love the film but it saddens me that it was butchered in editing with so much great footage cut out! I am very bias since i know how hard everyone works, but like to see review on that when you get chance. Besides I can shead light on some area that might come up! How would th Cookie Monster like to see Green Lantern soon?
Ryan, it’s on for the week of May 27th (I think) as per the blog sidebar (it says April 29th, but I think Cookie’s mixed up a little on that one 🙂 )
Thanks G- didnt even see that, ya looks like we have time travel issue to work out first… =)
Well Cookie Monster, sounds like the makers of the movie were Talking Heads fans. How many Katoes as side kicks are there? Green Hornet, Pink Panther, maybe another? I found it very confusing when I was younger. Now there is the Cato institute but has nothing to do with asian sidekicks. very confusing. feel like Sapherous.
Another one you saved me from watching Cookie. You are seriously dedicated to the cause and have suffered much for us.