Weekly film analysis: Hardcore Henry (2015)

‘Henry is resurrected from death with no memory, and he must save his wife from a telekinetic warlord with a plan to bio-engineer soldiers.’

Hardcore Henry was a 2015 Russian- American science fiction film written, co-produced and directed by IIya Naishuller and produced by Timur Bekmambetov. The themes of this film were mystery, death, violence, betrayal, etc. The production companies of this were Huayi Brothers Pictures and distributed by STX Entertainment. The language was set in mostly Russian and English. The budget of this film was $2-3 million and had a great box office of $14.3 million.

What makes this film stand out was that it was shot from a first-person perspective, which attracted a large audience range, especially people that enjoy FPOV video games. It made the film hugely engaging, making the audience feel as they was put on the spot of being Henry throughout the whole film.

The film starts off with a group of boys  bullying him, then goes in with the film credits showing red lighted scenes of guns, man being punched, already indicating that this film relates to violence, and death. The red shots could foreshadow danger of what’s about to come.  He finds himself awake in a bath found in a laboratory with a female scientist who later claims to be his wife. Already expressing the theme of love, makes the audience question why his wife wanted him back and why in a robotic form? Audience may question, why is his qualities needed? Both the wife and he is the protagonist and the antagonist would be Akan. Performance is used to show Akan’s qualities of being psychokinetic, which empowers his ‘villain like’ qualities, making us realise why Akan would want to take control of Henry and use him as his own. Towards the end of the film, the audience uncovers that his wife wasn’t actually his wife and was actually Akan’s wife who used her to set him up to betray him. Again, the micro feature of ‘performance’ makes it indicative nobody could be trusted and that Estelle was just used to manipulate soldiers like Henry.