So I recently rewatched a favourite film of mine. The plot isn’t great, the characters aren’t particularly charismatic or relatable and to a lot of people it just seems like a poster child for gratuitous violence.
But that’s not the reason I enjoy Hardcore Henry so much. The whole film is complete unique in that it’s entirely shot from a first person perspective. And coupled with the outlandish violence and the dramatic movement within the film, it makes for either a very entertaining or very disorienting experience to watch.
The power of first person is the ability to place your audience directly into the viewpoint and shoes of the protagonist. Everything you see and everything they interact with is a completely new and organic experience; your hero sees things at the same time that we do, and they react to things at the same time we do.
Even in the most insane situations, such as parkouring down the face of a tall building, running across rooftops, getting into a ridiculous gunfight in an abandoned apartment building; all of those scenarios become a personal adventure the second we start seeing everything from the eyes of our hero.
The directors even built a complete unique rig for the task of making the first person seem realistic; rather than a camera placed on the head like one might expect, the head rig holds the device at mouth level so that on the screen we see everything roughly at eye level. It also allows the actor to effectively move around and interact with the environment without being in danger of injury to himself.
In terms of the film itself, we don’t even see the protagonists face until a brief moment very later on in the story. There’s even a viable reason in the plot as to why Henry doesn’t even have a voice to speak with; all of these in conjunction with each other provide a very interesting and personalised experience when watching the film.
Ramblings of a Film Student 