The Green Hornet

The Green Hornet may not have the crazy grit and "comic-book" flair of Kick-Ass, but it has an excellent bad guy (on a par with Mark Strong in Kick-Ass in terms of quality), precise Snyder-esque visuals, and Seth Rogen, who wrote a perfectly funny script and does a great job playing the main character just as comically as well. Michel Gondry's handwriting isn't lost in what for him is such an uncharacteristic genre, so all in all this is a popcorn film on a solid level. (19/01/2011)

Funny, quite solid action and an imaginative change of the superhero scheme. The heroes of The Green Hornet do not rely on the power of the mask and try to handle the symbolic power through a controlled newspaper - the result is extremely refreshing. Though transparent in places, The Green Hornet turns into a very exciting and epicurean spectacle thanks to a few twists and an inevitable sense of trouble behind an otherwise teenage ride. Add to that Gondry's poetic inserts, the excellent Waltz (the guy waltzes again!), a fresh heroic duo and a pleasant tribute to The Pink Panther, we soon have a candidate for this year's best blockbuster. Minuses: unnecessary 3D that looks like a children’s concertina book, and also that The Green Hornet does not have a completely balanced pace. That's why it loses half a star from me compared to last year’s Kick-ass. (11/01/2011)

I've been feeling lately that I’m giving harsher reviews. I guess it's because I've gotten a whiff of South Korean filmmaking. It's set the bar pretty high. But to the rating… I like the duo of Rogen and Chou, but it hasn’t got enough action for and action film and not funny enough for a comedy. Cameron Diaz played a completely unnecessary role. I guess this was just a name to catch moviegoers at the movies. The ending was pretty much a big "humbug", so 3.5 stars. (14/06/2011)

For me, a massively pleasant surprise. Green Hornet was a lot of fun, both with the straightforward jokes and with the way it mocks itself (when the villain puts on a red robe and a gas mask is just hilarious… though not everyone will share that opinion) and other films in the genre (the ending similar to the fateful conclusion of The Dark Night). Gondry made it incredibly brisk and playful, like the fooling around of boys unbound by ethics. And the reflection on how the media manipulates with public opinion is not as cheap as you would expect from a comic-book film. I watched it in 2D, I don’t think the 3D version could be any better. (20/01/2011)

I must say that I definitely expected a bit more from this movie than what I ultimately got, but in the end, it's not that terrible. It's just not that exceptional either. Christoph Waltz is absolutely excellent, and it's great that he can make fun of himself a bit. Seth Rogen doesn't stand out in this and is rather annoying. I was quite surprised that Michel Gondry's direction is too much influenced by the genre. It resulted in a rather unremarkable work that will probably go unnoticed. (27/02/2014)