Green Hornet (2011)

I have been a fan of Michel Gondry since his video directing days, and for the most part have enjoyed his transition to feature director, Eternal Sunshine being one of my favourite films, but there have also been glimpses of his oddball sensibility and eye for the clever and absurd even in the films that didn't fully work. Green Hornet is the first really commercial project he has helmed, working with writers Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg (or Superbad and Pineapple Express fame) and it similarly their first foray into the world of big budget, more traditional blockbuster territory. The result is a film that surprised me, I didn't have great expectations despite the pedigree, in fact everything I had seen about the film hadn't impressed me, but the final product is a distinctive, fun and unusual comic book film. It has some big problems, but also does some things very well and marries the sensibilities of its creators well with the material.
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I was unfamiliar with Green Hornet prior to seeing the film, as it is it concerns Britt Reid (Seth Rogan), wealthy heir to a successful media empire but well renowned layabout with little in the way of business acumen or affection for his cold and somewhat distant father. Following his fathers death he starts to bond with Kato, one of his fathers assistants, together they seek to vandalise a statue of Reid's father, but during the operation they inadvertently stop a robbery. Sensing something they form a partnership, with the aim of pretending to be new players in the local gang wars, only to be secretly working to help people. It's a little convoluted but I get the idea to flip the usual. good guy with a secret identity on its head and have the good guys pretend to be bad, but the film never focuses too much on how this is accomplished, or to what aim it is put. Their main adversary through the film is insecure crime lord Chudnofsky, played by Christoph Waltz. It is here that the film stumbles somewhat as well, his character is supposed to be strange but dangerous, constantly worrying about what others think of him, but Waltz seems to almost be in a different film to everyone else. It's not really his fault, the character just never quite gels  and even with his neat double barrelled pistol he doesn't stand out as a memorable or worthy villain to the piece. Similarly Cameron Diaz plays Lenore Case, a wannabe journalist that Reid hires as his assistant. The film starts to build something of a relationship between the two but her character isn't given much to do other than prompt Reid and Kato with ideas of what criminal activities to be seen performing next.
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So what did I like? Well my issues mainly lie around everything outside of Reid and Kato, when the film focuses on them, and puts together details of how their partnership forms and progresses it is significantly more entertaining and fun than at any other time. Rogan and Jay Chou have great chemistry, despite (or even because of) Chou's difficulty with English it lets his performance be so much more physical and paring him with Rogan in typical motor-mouth mode was a master stroke. What is also unusual about Green Hornet is that the Hornet himself (Rogan) is by far the weak link in the partnership. He is the front man, but Kato is the real superhero, Reid may bankroll the operation but Kato builds the tech and has the martial arts skills. The visualisation of which (utilising Kato-vision) is one of Gondry's neatest visual tricks in the film, as the pair fight Kato is able to identify and isolate threats and predict their movements. It seems goofy but works really like any other superpower and makes the fights both clever and original.
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The film is a sort of strange mix of blockbuster and comedy and can be very funny, but with strong likeable lead performances and with Gondry's distinctive eye giving it all a polished, but distinctive voice and vision it very much feels like its own beast. I'm not clamouring for more Green Hornet adventures, but I wouldn't be adverse to it either, in the swarm of comic book films that are enveloping our culture at the moment Green Hornet certainly stands as the odd one out, but shouldn't be automatically overlooked. There's a low-fi charm and spring in its step that I didn't expect and that I, despite everything in the film that didn't quite work, still enjoyed.