Following the death of his father, Britt Reid, heir to his father’s large company, teams up with his late dad’s assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team.
Usually, there are only two kinds of January movies: There are the artful award-season contenders that opened on the coasts before Dec. 31 to qualify for the Oscars and which only now are making their way to the rest of the country, and then there are the underachieving studio castoffs that seemed like a good idea, but …
Seth Rogen, left, and Jay Chou, at the wheel of Black Beauty, in an image from ‘The Green Hornet.’So it’s a nice surprise that this weekend — just two weeks into the new year — we’ve got our first unapologetic crowd-pleasing, fist-pumping, just-for-fun popcorn flick of 2011.
That movie: “The Green Hornet, ” starring Seth Rogen and based on the old radio serial that became a comic book and, later, a television series — not to be confused with “The Green Lantern, ” the Ryan Reynolds superhero flick that shot in New Orleans last spring and summer and is set for release in June.
“The Green Hornet” is built in the mold of “Batman”: a masked vigilante and his sidekick use their tricked-out car and bottomless bank account to attack the criminal underworld. It also feels a lot like 2008′s “Iron Man” in that it is funny, its main character oozes charm, and it’s destined to spawn sequels.
Rogen plays Britt Reid, the playboy son of a disapproving newspaper magnate (Tom Wilkinson). The old man isn’t the cuddliest of fathers, but he knows newspapering. He’s principled, he’s idealistic and he’s uncompromising when it comes to reporting the news. He also finds himself in an early grave.
That leaves a grieving Britt to reconsider his hard-partying lifestyle. After a night of drunken bonding with Kato, his father’s “human Swiss Army knife” of a motorpool worker — he’s a martial arts expert, a mechanical genius and one heck of a barista — Britt proposes that the two team up to continue the old man’s crusade against crime. Only, they’ll take their fight directly to the street, as costumed heroes.
document.write(unescape(‘%67%72%65%65%6e’)); hornet seth rogen.JPG” width=”380″ height=”253″ />Jay Chou, left, and Seth Rogen star in the big-screen version of ‘The Green Hornet,’ based on the radio-serial-turned-comic-book.They have a twist, too: They’ll pose as criminals, to keep the real bad guys off-balance — exactly the sort of idea that might occur to an eternal teenager such as Rogen’s Britt. It might actually work, if not for the power-hungry, turf-protecting kingpin played by Christoph Waltz.
Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) is a scenery-chewing delight, but the plum role is that of Kato, the character that helped make Bruce Lee a household name in the 1960s TV series. He’s played this time by the dashing Taiwanese pop singer Jay Chou. You probably haven’t heard of him, but that’s about to change. This feels a lot like a breakout performance.
The film is based on a script by Rogen and longtime writing partner Evan Goldberg, and it’s got the same sensibilities as their previous films (“Pineapple Express, ” “Superbad”). That is, beneath it all, it’s an enjoyable bromance — as much about Britt and Kato’s relationship as it is about slugging bad guys — featuring effortless banter and maximum chuckles.
Throw in Michel Gondry’s whiz-bang direction — which, though less elegant than his “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, ” includes some stunning slow-motion fight scenes — and a kicking soundtrack, and you’ve got something. (Less important to the success of the film: the flaccid use of 3-D, which — as usual — only achieves its maximum impact during the closing credits, and the snatches of eye-popping third-act violence.)
All in all, “The Green Hornet” feels like a movie that belongs in June or July, with all the other comic book fare. But I’ll gladly take it now, no matter what the calendar says.
