The Green Hornet DVD review

This week there were two major releases on DVD and Blu-Ray, the first being The Green Hornet.  The movie stars Seth Rogen as the title character as well as Cameron Diaz and Jay Chou (who plays Kato).  I really want to jump right in. 

What I liked about the movie:
Christoph Waltz
Wow, this man is so good at what he does!  Waltz plays the primary villain in the film and nails it.  This role doesn't require quite the evil necessary for his Academy Award winning role in Inglourious Basterds, but is still great.  He has a dark comedic tone that he just gets perfect.  Towards the end of the film his character falls off the deep end.  And while I think the script was terrible, Waltz did what he could.  Great job.

What I didn't like about the movie:
The rest of the cast
I'm not kidding, the rest of the cast was terrible in this film.  Start off with our "star" of the film, Seth Rogen.  Forget how terrible the script is (I'll get there in a moment), all he does is scream his lines.  Seriously, it feels like his voice cracks every minute or two just to scream his lines.  Diaz is forgettable at best.  It seriously makes me wonder why she took the role in the first place.  Last is Jay Chou who was obviously cast for his martial arts and not his acting.  I hate to bag on the guy, because his martial arts are very impressive, but he is a terrible actor.  It's so bad people, believe me.

The Script
Am I supposed to care that Seth Rogen and his buddy Evan Goldberg wrote this?  It's such a stupid story, written in the most idiotic way imaginable.  I'm not an expert of writing, but the structure, the flow, the character development was all terrible.  I can't explain to you how much I disliked this film.  It was like a train wreck I couldn't get my eyes off of.


The Blu-Ray:
Tons of goodies
Despite how much I hated this movie, this is a DVD review after all.  The blu-ray featured some great visuals as well as sound.  The special features are as follows:
PS3 Theme
Jay Chou Audition
Double Barrel
movieIQ
The Green Hornet Cutting Room
Filmmakers' Commentary
"Awesoom"-Gag Reel
"Trust Me" -Director Michel Gondry
Writing The Green Hornet
The Black Beauty: Rebirth of Cool
The Stunt Family Armstrong
Finding Kato
The Art of Destruction

The best of the bunch was The Black Beauty featurette about the new car.  Gag reels are always fun and soo too was the Art of Destruction.  Overall thumbs up for the blu-ray and it's extras.


The Verdict:
PLEASE PASS
I say please because I want it to be a hint to Hollywood to stop making total stink rehash remakes.  I know I defend movies like The A-Team for being a 'go numb for two hours' appeal to them.  This is way different.  The movie didn't have likeable characters at all, the action felt stale, and the story is God awful.  I will say, relentlessly, this movie is terrible!

"Wichita" Now "Knight & Day"

This is an update to my previous post about James Mangold's Untitled "Wichita" Project.

As you may recall, director of films 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line James Mangold has been working on an untitled film featuring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz and Paul Dano that was nicknamed "Wichita." The story had to do with a "powerful battery that holds the key to an infinite power source" which was probably created by Dano's character.

Cruise plays a government agent who's just met Diaz's character as they both must survive conspiracy theory type action scenarios, a la Eagle Eye.

Well, the film is now called Knight & Day and still has nothing to do with knights in shining armor. Also added to the cast are Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Grace.

I'm looking forward to a trailer to see what this will look like. Hopefully it won't just be anotherEagle Eye or Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Quickie: Cameron Diaz in talks for The Green Hornet

Cameron Diaz blew up in Hollywood with a superhero movie of sorts, The Mask, starring Jim Carrey. So it's not too far fetched that she would be in talks to star alongside Seth Rogen in The Green Hornet. This is just talk, but we'll hopefully have confirmation by next week. Picture courtesy of backseatcuddler.com.