However, The Green Hornet doesn't require the legend of Bruce Lee or rumors of rivalries to keep people's interest; The Green Hornet is an interesting twist on the classic superhero story. When Britt Reid (Seth Rogan) decides to become a crime-fighting hero, he immediately realizes that the one shared weakness of all superheros is their desire to help the populace at large. When confronted with a superhero do-gooder, any villain worth their salt needs merely endanger the public and he has complete control of the situation. Britt Reid decides that the solution is to pose as a criminal, himself. This allows him to attack other criminals under the guise of cutting into their business without exposing a weakness. With all of the superhero movies that have been doing well recently, the time was ripe for a revisit to the classic tale of The Green Hornet.
In this retelling of The Green Hornet, Seth Rogan plays Britt Reid, the emotionally neglected and idealistic son of single father, newspaper tycoon and hard-nosed realist, James Reid (Tom Wilkinson). Britt Reid rebels against his father, living like a rock-star and becoming a playboy living a constant party until his father dies from a bee sting, leaving Brett in control of his father's fortune and paper.
His father's death hits Britt hard. He leaves the control of the paper to his dad's advisor, Mike Axford (Edward James Olmos), and then goes home and summarily fires everyone who specifically worked for his late father. The next morning, however, Britt wakes to find that his super-amazing cup of latte tastes, well... not super amazing. He immediately calls for the guy that makes his coffee to return. As it turns out, his morning coffee is made by Kato (Jay Chou), an young Asian man who grew up on the streets and has a way with anything mechanical. He had worked as James Reid's mechanic and chauffer, not only keeping his cars in top condition, but modifying them with the addition of bullet-proof armor and similar protective upgrades. Britt hires Kato back and they get to know each other and share stories about how James wasn't as great as the public seems to think. They decide to exact their revenge by vandalizing the statue of James Reid that was erected in the graveyard, but after successfully removing the head and starting to run away, Britt comes upon a couple getting hassled by a gang of several assailants and he and Kato, who has amazing fighting skills, come to their rescue. This is when Britt comes up with the idea of them working as a team of superheroes in the guise of villains... and so it begins.
Kato points out that since the only crime they committed was vandalism of a statue and they don't actually intend to endanger the public, no one is going to take them seriously as criminals vying for control of the city. Britt realizes that he might just have a use for his father's newspaper, after all and uses it to portray The Green Hornet as public enemy number one. This gets the attention of the city's current crime lord, Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), a dangerous, though old-school, businessman in the business of crime. Through several interactions with others, Chudnofsky begins to get a complex, worrying that he's not "scary" enough. This eventually leads Chudnofsky to give his image a makeover, becoming a masked, themed super-villain by the name of "BLOODnofsky." Um, yeah. That's catchy.
Just when Britt Reid and Kato start to realize that they really have no idea what their course of action should be, Britt's new temp secretary, Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), shows up to help out. As it turns out, both Britt and Kato are instantly attracted to Lenore - half of which was enough for Britt to want to hire her. Plus, Lenore Case happens to have a background in criminology. Britt and Kato put this to good use by asking her what she thinks the Green Hornet's next move might be, then using her answers as their gameplan.
Kato puts his mechanical wizardry to use for the cause, upgrading one of James Reid's cars into "The Black Beauty" by adding some military grade offensive upgrades in addition to the protective measures he had added for Britt's father. With the Black Beauty (and later, a small fleet of them), The Green Hornet and Kato started taking out the smaller operations and working their way up to the larger guys (per Lenore's gameplan).
D.A. Frank Scanlon (David Harbour) is in the middle of a re-election campaign and is trying to eliminate crime from the city. His campaign is not doing very well in the midst of the newspaper coverage of The Green Hornet's personal war on crime, so he approaches Britt to ask that he downplay it in the papers. Britt throws him out, but not before the D.A. pulls his father's integrity into question.
Kato and Britt have a falling out over their mutual attraction to Lenore, but when Bloodnofsky attempts to hire The Green Hornet to kill Britt Reid, they'll have to put aside their differences to put things right.
There's a great chase scene at the end of the movie, which goes all around the city and then continues into the newspaper building itself. In my opinion, this chase scene would have been better if some of the deleted scenes that were part of it had been left in, but some of these scenes were used elsewhere, so at least they weren't all tossed out.
Those who are looking for a very serious comic book movie may want to look elsewhere, as there is a good bit of comedy in the writing and acting, from the superhero who can never get things right, to the sidekick who is much more talented than the superhero, to the villain with the inferiority complex and horrible PR skills. This is a superhero story about a non-super person trying to do heroic things... and not always doing so well. This is not a straight comedy, and there are the occasional darker moments, but The Green Hornet is generally a lighter take on the idea of a real-life superhero.
Some of the special features were really interesting, pointing out things I hadn't realized about the film. First, it was quite amazing to see just how much of the special effects and stunts were really stunt work and practical effects in The Stunt Family Armstrong. Very little was done with CG; for most effects, when the stunt team would point out something that would have to be done using CG, they would change the script to whatever could be done using real stunts. I also enjoyed seeing how they managed to round up thirty-something 66 Chrysler Imperials, then stripped them down and rebuilt them from the ground up to create the highly drivable stunt cars, the interior shot cars, etc. Rather than take the car in a whole new direction and redefine the vehicle, they kept it almost the same as the television series from the sixties. The Finding Kato featurette was really eye-opening, as it shows that Jay Chou is actually quite the rock star (or, more literally, rap star... I think?) in his home country of China. In fact, when he had downtime between days of shooting, he would fly back to China to put on huge arena concerts.
My favorite, however would probably be the deleted scenes that were (originally) part of the big chase scene at the end. Originally, Bloodnofsky had a list of attacks, labeled from A-Z, and he orders a good many of them, escalating to the next as each attack plan fails. I would have preferred them staying in that chase scene, but I'm sure that some might have thought it over-the-top or merely too long of a chase scene.
I didn't know what to expect with The Green Hornet. I had listened to the radio drama on audio cassette back when those existed, so I was familiar with the license, but I wasn't overly invested in it; I wasn't the world's greatest Green Hornet fan or anything. Still, I was hoping that the film wouldn't be made as a spoof of the old movie, as many remakes as of late have been. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had straddled the line, making Britt Reid out to be a bit of a buffoon, but a good-hearted one who was desperately trying to make a positive change on the world.
If you have a 3D Blu-ray set-up, then I would recommend watching The Green Hornet in 3D Blu-ray. When I saw it in the theater, it was in 3D, and for the most part, the effects were subtle, rather than gimmicky and in-your-face-just-because-they-can. If you've got Blu-ray but not 3D Blu-ray or, for that matter, DVD, with hopes of getting a Blu-ray setup soon, the 3 disc set gives you access to all three formats, letting you mark this as "added" to your collection without having to decide to upgrade later when you upgrade your system.
