The Green Hornet – review

The latest comic-book superhero to be given the A treatment on the big screen, the Green Hornet is the alias of rich newspaper magnate Britt Reid. With his sidekick, the chauffeur and inventor Kato, he began life on US radio in 1936 and became a comic book and B-feature figure in the 1940s, before appearing on TV in the 1960s with Bruce Lee as Kato, a character whose origins moved over the years from Japanese to Filipino, Korean and, finally, Chinese.

Instead of outlandish, tight-fitting fancy dress, the Green Hornet wears a business suit, dark overcoat, green trilby and a green domino half-mask. The gimmick of the film version is that society playboy Britt Reid (Seth Rogen, who's also the co-writer) is a thick-headed braggart who takes credit for the brilliant plans and inventions of Kato (Jay Chou) and is trying to live up to the high standards set by his late workaholic father (Tom Wilkinson).

The movie is extremely loud and none too funny. Everything goes on too long, most especially the destructive car chases and the karate fights, and one would never have guessed such conventional fare was directed by Michel Gondry, who made the sublime Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Cameron Diaz as the romantic interest operates uninterestingly in two modes – angry and angrier.

The movie's principal attraction, and it's a considerable one, is a beguiling performance by Christoph Waltz as an insecure, deceptively mild Russian gangster seeking to be the criminal overlord of Los Angeles. It's another version of the sinister, smiling SS officer for which he won an Oscar in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds last year.