(Image taken from: Moviescut.com)
The Green Hornet is good. Iron Man good. Except, here's the difference. Whereas the first half of the first Iron Man movie was undoubtedly amazing, the second half was a big let down in comparison (Come on, you know it's true.)
But The Green Hornet doesn't suffer from that problem. It's good all the way through.
Seth Rogen plays the hero in this off-beat, surprisingly funny action/comedy, and Jay Chou plays his sidekick, Kato. But the thing is, this isn't really an action movie at all. While Iron Man was meant to be this big, explosion heavy actionioner, it really wasn't. At it's heart, it was really the story of a rich boy who learned that there were things in life that more important than money and fame. And in many ways, it surprised everyone because it wasn't so action heavy. And The Green Hornet surprises, too, but in a very different way. It surprises because it was never meant to be this good.
I think the key to why The Green Hornet is so enjoyable is because of the major role-reversal going on here. While Iron Man had other characters besides Robert Downey Jr. in it, let's be honest, it was the Robert Downey Jr. show. But Seth Rogen, playing the star here, really trades off the action to Chou, who makes everything that you would think to be impossible possible (Except for swimming, of course, which is the obvious task that you'd expect him to be good at). And while he's handling the action, Rogen's got the comedy down. Really, and I don't want to say things that I'll regret later, so I'll choose my words carefully, but this movie really reminds me of Big Trouble in Little China. It's similar in the way that Jack Burton, the supposed hero of the film played by Kurt Russel, really plays second fiddle to Wang, who handles all of the fisticuffs. And any movie that reminds me of BTILC can't be too bad. I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. It's not worth seeing in 3D, but definitely worth seeing all the same. So go see it.
Three and a half stars out of four.
