With this ultra-hard, hyperactive action hit, the name says it all: “Hardcore” is a fast-paced, gory and crudely funny brawl with crazy ideas – presented in a first-person perspective!
In close-up, half a head is blown off, a motorcycle including sidecar hurtles at full speed through a pick-up truck and a bus passenger is attacked with a flamethrower. But the greatest thrill is when the main character climbs the walls of houses, rappels down from a skyscraper or runs over narrow railings. Because we are the protagonist!
Before rock musician and music video director Ilya Naishuller staged the racy, entertaining action movie “Nobody” starring Bob Odenkirk, he delivered a smash hit with “Hardcore” that lives up to its name: The brutal ripper filmed in first-person perspective is a highly entertaining stunt spectacle full of crazy ideas and juicy, crackling violent peaks. Numerous streaming services are now offering the FSK 18 hit at a low price, including Amazon Prime Video.
“Hardcore” on Prime Video*
If you can’t get enough of “Hardcore”: the dirty fun won’t just be given up DVD* And Blu ray*but also inside Blu ray Steelbook* as well as in what is slowly becoming a rare collector’s item media book* with soundtrack and bonus comic.
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Henry was on the verge of death, but luckily Estelle (Haley Bennett) works in the field of cybernetics. Using modern prosthetics, she reassembles the badly injured fighter, who can’t even remember that he and Estelle are a married couple. Before Henry regains his voice, mercenary boss Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) bursts into the lab and uses telekinesis to kidnap the scientist. Now it’s up to a still-distraught Henry and his baffling accidental acquaintance Jimmy (Sharlto Copley) to save Estelle and stop Akan from using her resources to create a cyborg army!
A pale as a sheet with supernatural powers who babbles in filthy whispers, a voiceless protagonist with the roly-poly qualities of a mutt, a Sharlto Copley who keeps popping up in new disguises and character traits. And when nothing blows up, blood spatters, bones break, or risky street stunt acrobatics are performed, bathe in the crude, pitch-black humor of the “Crank” movies: “Hardcore” is a “throw it all on the wall and see what sticks” brand movie.
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Those who watch this must have a fear of heights and be able to ask taste questions in the back for just over 90 minutes of film. If you meet these conditions, you will receive one almost incomparable high-pressure movie experience that has hardly any breathers, but all the more sweaty, grimy adrenaline rushes.
The fact that “Hardcore” does not degenerate into monotonous, audiovisual noise is partly due to Naishuller’s kinetic and thoughtful direction: first he introduces the somewhat futuristic Moscow, in which his film is set, with relative caution, in order to directly express the “everything can, nothing must” attitude of his story.
Which in turn is rich in bizarre ideas (see for example: everything that has to do with the cheerfully exaggerated Sharlto Copley) and reckless twists. However, Naishuller is aware that the audience for such a film First-person shooter gunfights, painful hand-to-hand combat and crushing stunts wants, and not about elaborate explanations and character-driven drama.
Therefore, Naishuller keeps the alibi plot in the background and deals with the dilemmas and character development alongside it, while Henry just sprints, punches, kicks, shoots, knocks or climbs again. The director succeeds surprisingly well: although we usually only see Henry’s arms and he does not say a word throughout the film, you still get a good impression of how this street fighter works.
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In addition, despite their speed and immediacy, Naishuller avoids the action sequences, which were mostly filmed with the GoPro Hero3 Black Edition, falling into utter chaos: Henry always gets an overview of the situation and the scene when the opportunity arises before he starts .
Henry’s unspoken plans occasionally go awry, sometimes making for poignant humor, tension rises, and crowds ensue. This keeps “Hardcore” varied and fresh throughout, rather than relying on its ego perspective gimmick.
The biggest highlights of “Hardcore” are still the scenes that depict pure stunt whirls from the first-person perspective — like a daring (and crushingly botched) jump over a packed escalator: Henry frantically grabs a passerby and knocks her to the ground onto the moving metal steps. That was not originally planned, but is an outtake that ended up in the movie.
Because the extra was a professional stuntwoman, she was able to improvise at lightning speed when she was accidentally hit by her colleague. She fell so that it looks especially dramatic, but nothing happens to her. Still, her scene partner feared for a split second that he had just taken someone’s life with his unfortunate jump.
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That more than ten (!) people embodied Henry and operated the camera at the same time should come as no surprise given such gritty acrobatics: Several cameramen had to pass in action after some timebecause the neck pain caused by the heavy camera helmet and the great physical exertion became too straining.
One Henry actor/cameraman even lost a tooth on set after he accidentally rammed a stuntman in one scene. But in an insidious way, that’s the beauty of “Hardcore”: This dirty mutt’s response to pitch-black, comedic, ultra-violent cyborg action à la “RoboCop” puts us right in the middle of the gruff battle.
Except we don’t run any risk of injury – other than choking on the icy drink or the spicy chips when something unbelievable happens on screen at the wrong time.
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