The Green Hornet

We're in the early stages of the downfall of the superhero genre. Of that fact I am certain. I don't hold any illusions that the genre will ever die, and I'm sure it will find a resurgence again one day, but if the first era of superhero began with Batman and ended with Batman & Robin, then the second era that started with Spider-Man seems to be nearing it's end. The Green Hornet is a perfect example of why. Much like we saw in the 90's with The Shadow and The Phantom, studios are now scrapping the bottom of the barrel in search of any properties to adapt. Where once we got X-Men, now we get The Green Hornet. Certainly not a horrible movie, Hornet is still so by the numbers that it is little more than an afterthought of the genre.

The Green Hornet treads familiar waters here. When a young playboy's father is killed, he realizes he's been wasting his life aimlessly chasing women and decides to become a superhero and fight crime. He enlists his father's mechanic Kato to help him, and Kato ends up being the real hero. It's a cross between Batman and Big Trouble in Little China, halfheartedly aping both. Really, the issue is that there is no story here. In retrospect, it feels like the duo never actually fight crime. Sure, they talk about the fact they're fighting crime, and we see newspapers claiming that they're all over the city, but aside from a showdown at the end of the film, they only have one, maybe two moments where they actually tangle with street thugs. instead, much of the film focuses on the banter between The Hornet and Kato. You'd think that would be a good thing in a Seth Rogen film, but sadly that's just as halfhearted as everything else.

The chemistry between Rogen and Jay Chou as Kato is severely lacking. Maybe it's the fact Chou isn't very good with English, maybe it's because Rogen seems out of his element in a film like this, but the comedy is often as weak as the action. The only highlight is Christoph Waltz as the villain Chudnofsky. Chudnofsky is an incredibly generic crime boss, and he knows it. The biggest laughs came from him grappling with the fact that in a world of superheroes, no one finds a businessman in a suit especially frightening. His slow descent into madness is amusing, as is his complete misunderstanding of what makes a supervillain scary. He rechristens himself Bloodnofsky, dresses in a red suit and a gas mask, and looks completely foolish. While it would have been nice to see what Waltz could have done with a really interesting villain, he does enough with Chudnofsky to make him amusingly forgettable, which is kind of the point. The rest of the cast is utterly wasted. Tom Wilkinson is removed from the film almost from the start. Edward Furlong and Edward James Olmos are wasted in roles beneath them. And Cameron Diaz seems to come in from a completely different film. It's clear that she's there just because a studio executive didn't think a superhero movie can work without a love interest, no matter how perfunctory.

Director Michel Gondry seems at times to be at odds with the material he's been given. His ability to film action is clearly lacking. Many scenes are shot too close up or too darkly to make anything out. The few set pieces the film has all feel incredibly generic. But when the film isn't trying to be an action movie, he will throw in flourishes that seem like they deserve to be in a much better film. One moment in particular really made me wonder how they pulled it off. A henchman tells another henchman to find The Green Hornet, and the screen then splits in two without cutting, following both men as they pass the word along. Each person they come into contact with then splits off without the film cutting. The screen fills with numerous different panels, none with any discernible cuts, leaving us wondering how Gondry accomplished the image we're seeing. It's a creative way to illustrate a normally mundane aspect of a film like this. Gondry would throw in little touches like this every once in a while, almost as if he was bored by the material and needed to do something to keep himself challenged. While these moments can't save the film, they make it at times more watchable than it otherwise would be.

With a number of big superhero franchises falling apart (X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman), and an upcoming onslaught of low tier superhero movies (Thor, The Green Lantern), things seem dire for the genre. Certainly not the worst film the genre has produced, The Green Hornet still suffers immensely from a lack of identity. It wants to be Batman, but it needs to be its own thing, whatever that thing may be. It fails at being either, and as a result it just comes across as tired and forgettable. The Green Hornet was once a major property in the days of radio, but the transition to the modern age doesn't suit the character in any way. If studios can't show some restraint in greenlighting movies like this, they're going to make the genre as a whole a lot less special. Movies like The Dark Knight are becoming the exception, not the rule.

Inglourious Basterds

In the 5 years I've been doing this, there are few major working filmmakers left that I have yet to really talk about. While I reviewed Grindhouse, I didn't really discuss Quentin Tarantino. Well, that changes here. After breaking out with Pulp Fiction, and following it up with Jackie Brown (a film slowly gaining the esteem it deserves), I feel Tarantino has been off his game. The Kill Bills didn't quite work for me - although I am in the minority of preferring Vol. 2 - and Death Proof was his career low point. And yet, much like Scorsese, even a bad Tarantino film is a film worth watching and discussing. So where does that leave us with Inglourious Basterds, his decade in the making WWII project? Well, I am of the opinion that he is back on the top of his game. Here is a film second only to Pulp Fiction in his canon, and it is a film filled to the brim with ideas, characters, and pure entertainment of the kind only Tarantino seems able to deliver.

Basterds is a film about a lot of things, and while I know Tarantino would like people to simply enjoy his films first and foremost, I feel that at the heart of the film there are two issues worth examining. Namely, the influence of cinema on the world, and the power of language. The second item first: this is not an action film, but a dialog-action film. The most tense beats don't come from shootouts, but rather from the words that lead to the shootouts. The man who uses words most to his advantage is Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Nicknamed "The Jew Hunter," Landa sees himself more as a detective, and he uses words to find what he wants. Take the opening - perhaps best - scene, in which Landa interrogates a farmer about the whereabouts of his Jewish neighbors. Landa chooses his words oh so carefully, using them to gain the upper hand in the conversation. He seems to derive pleasure from being the most informed person in the room, and he likes to doll out what he knows slowly, as to let it dawn on his prey just what he knows. He could easily come into a room shouting and blasting, but instead he takes the most pleasure from methodically telling the farmer what he knows. This is something he does throughout the movie and it never ceases to be thrilling. We are never sure what to make of Landa because he seems to pick and choose what should be said when. When he finally lays everything out, you may be surprised where his true allegiences lie (or perhaps not).

And in a film where the words are so important, it is interesting to note how multilingual the film is. English is spoken only sparingly, and there is French, German, Italian, and maybe other languages used throughout. At one point, Landa asks to switch from French to English, and we think it's simply a silly way for Tarrantino to make it easier on the audience. Not at all. It is a very deliberate tactic used by Landa, and the realization of that fact is one of the film's many powerful moments. The power of language clearly has a hierarchy in the film, as evidenced by the titular Basterds not knowing any other languages. When it comes time for them to enact a plan that could end the war, it is reliant on them knowing another language. Most of them speak only English, and a few can speak broken Italian. This puts them at a major disadvantage in the film's climax. It is refreshing to see a film examine the ways power can play out in a multilingual world.

The other point of interest is the cinema itself. Tarantino loves to reference other films in his work, and here is no exception. From the famous open door shot in The Searchers, to the use of classic Ennio Morricone scores, this is as much a Western at heart as it is a war film. And yet, that is not enough for Tarantino. Here he actually uses his film as a way to comment on the power of film as a medium. Much of the film takes place in a French cinema house during a world premiere. The film in question, a Nazi propaganda film, is used to demonstrate the way film can be used to form opinions. Much like language, Tarantino is saying that cinema itself can be a powerful tool in how power is delegated. And on the flip side, film can be the ultimate catharsis. Young Shosanna Dreyfus, whose family was killed by Landa, creates her own film to splice into the propaganda film during the premiere. Forcing the Nazis in attendance to watch it gives her a moment of power over those who have tried to take power away from her. More than any other thing he has done, Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's love letter to cinema.

But is the film itself entertaining? On an intellectual level, clearly. But for the average audience, I it might be too much to take. It's a two and a half hour movie with very little English dialog. It was sold as a Brad Pitt action film, when in reality his Basterds are a small part of a bigger picture. The film is at least 90% people talking to each other. And yet, there seems like a lot here that people can enjoy as well. The dialog is often excruciatingly tense, the violence - when it's there - is visceral, and the ending is an amazing and unexpected payoff. People around me seemed dumbfounded by something Tarantino does at the end, and when they began to grasp that he had indeed gone there, surprised laughter started erupting around the theater. The payoff is well worth it, it just depends on how willing you are to go along with the film in order to get there. For me, it's probably the most interesting and exciting picture of the year so far, and one I hope to revist again soon.