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Hardcore Henry | 2016 | R | - 6.10.9
A scientist resurrects a dead man as a cybernetic super-soldier, although he has amnesia and is mute. Through his eyes we see him struggle to save his former wife (Haley Bennett) from dangerous thugs, defeat a warlord (Danila Kozlovsky) who has a bio-engineered army for world conquest and rediscover his own identity. Also with Sharlto Copley, Andrey Dementyev and Tim Roth. Directed by Ilya Naishuller. A few lines of dialogue are in Russian with English subtitles and many additional lines of Russian dialogue are not translated. [1.36]
SEX/NUDITY 6 - Many women in a brothel are shown wearing bras and panties while some women writhe around dance poles and two female couples kiss each other to entertain a man; one woman runs away from the camera, fully nude, with bare buttocks visible and another woman is nude in profile (we see bare breasts). Several women are seen in a dark room and they are topless, wearing black briefs and thongs (we see their bare breasts). A man clad only in tight Speedos kneels behind a woman that's bent at the waist and on hands and knees on a sofa (no sex is shown). A woman wearing a low-cut, short dress reveals cleavage twice. A woman on a bus wears a mini skirt. Two shirtless men in a pond are visible. A woman on a couch wears a skimpy tank top and panties that reveal bare legs and cleavage. Eight shirtless men stand in a lab room and we see their bare backs and chest.
► Three policemen accost a young woman in an abandoned building, attempting to rape her by forcing her to perform oral sex on one of them; we see the man's partially bare thighs (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A woman wearing shorts kisses a man for several seconds. A man kisses a clothed woman twice and rubs her buttocks and one breast with his hands. A woman kisses a man's hand and sucks one of his fingers. A man with a blood spattered face kisses a man on the lips and then kicks him away.
► A man calls a ball bat his penis and rubs it as if masturbating. A man opens a drawer and we see a phallus shaped sexual device.
► A man says his penis does not work, even after a transplant from a cadaver, but that his clones have a lot of sex (using crude terms). A man says that another man wearing a silver puffy suit has the "gayest" suit he's ever seen. A woman tells a cybernetic man twice that she is his wife and loves him.
VIOLENCE/GORE 10 - We see action as a video game, from the viewpoint of a man as he uses a shaky camera at a high-speed, jarring, non-stop pace with buzzing, clanging music often playing in the background.
► A man chases soldiers through streets and parking garages, up and down ladders, shooting and killing three men and killing many other men later: he steals a car, runs over three men and smashes another car. A man chases two groups of soldiers in several hallways, through subway stores, up and down staircases, through a brothel (women run and scream) and in the ruins of an old building: he shoots and kills dozens of men and blows others up with grenades that cause fire and smoke (one soldier is thrown into the air from the bottom of a staircase as a grenade explodes, screaming loudly and falls off-screen); blood pools and splatters large stains on floors, walls and ceilings as heads explode and people run away and scream. Many soldiers attack a man with punches, kicks, and throws; he kills them all (blood flows). A man wearing a camera throws grenades and dead bloody soldiers fall in through the roof and one soldier falls onto a computer terminal, and his head and torso explode in blood splatter everywhere; the man fights a soldier and sticks a glass spike in his head, slamming a metal box on it, and smashing the head into the floor, leaving vast amounts of pooled blood and a bloody handprint on a wall. A man wraps barbed wire around one hand and fights another man, subdues him, chokes him with barbed wire and throws him screaming off a roof to his death, but keeps the man's severed, bloody head (he shows the bloody head to a woman, who curses loudly) that he later tosses it away leaving his hands slimy with blood and gore. A policeman pulls a car over with two male occupants and off-screen gunfire breaks the windshield and strikes the driver's head, blowing it up with much gore and blood spatter.
► A man shoots another man dead, opens his chest with gushing blood and takes out a gory heart, strips a wire out of it and drops the organ; a third man plugs the wire into the first man's chest and the screen pixelates and clears. A man fights a large man, kills him with a knife and opens his chest, removing a bloody flashlight-like device and then putting it into his own stomach with his fingers (we see blood flow). A man uses pliers to pull a wire out of another man's arm and blood flows. A clone dies with blood flowing out of his mouth and the side of his face and a man in a wheelchair bleeds from the mouth, blood covering his chest and dies.
► The opening credits show silent, slow motion action: A knife going in one side of a man's neck and out the other side (with blood flow), a bullet opening a man's forehead into a dark tunnel, shells ejected from rifles, a brick smashing a man's head (with blood gushing), two men stabbed and one man shot in close-up in the abdomen (with blood gushing), a bullet shattering a motorcycle helmet, and a punch to a man's jaw causing blood flow.
► A large tank chases a man who climbs aboard and breaks into the top, slicing the necks of two soldiers with a sword and much bloodshed; he shoots and slashes and kills four additional men with bloodshed and he climbs a rope, shooting at a helicopter before falling into a large tree, unconscious. A man uses a motorcycle to chase men in vans; he shoots two vans off the highway, climbs into three other vans and shoots and stabs the occupants with substantial blood flow; one victim is shot in the stomach and stabbed in the eye (the blood turns black and clots later) and a dead, gory man hangs out a van window that drives off the road. A lab door bursts in, falls on a man and kills him as soldiers shoot automatic rifles, a man stabs another man in the stomach, blood gushes and the first man kidnaps a woman. A man wearing a camera runs through a crawl space, hallways and construction areas of a skyscraper and he and a woman fly in an escape pod through turbulence and crash on a highway; the unconscious woman is picked up by men who punch, kick and taser the camera-wearing man (the woman's face is scraped on one side). A grenade explodes in a clearing behind a woman and she falls dead with eyes open, off-screen. A man shoots several men as they shoot at him and many men fall dead in bloody heaps and we see a dead woman whose torso is off-screen. A man throws a silver platter into the head of another man, where it sticks deep, without blood flow, killing the victim. A ninja-dressed man cuts two women's arms with a knife in a long shot and we see some blood; another man chases him and shoots him in the leg, then kills him with some blood flow from the chest and face.
► A man wears an electronic helmet that allows him to form clones of himself that chase and kill soldiers in several scenes; they shoot and kill dozens of soldiers, using heavy automatic rifles, grenades and a rocket launcher. A man kicks over an unconscious man in a chair; the second man attacks the first man, who rips out computer wiring, rappels down the outside of the building and into a garbage bin, then chases the second man and hits him over the head with a bottle of wine; another man shoots the downed man in the head in front of men and women and off- screen gunfire kills that shooter (the two bloody dead bodies are dragged off-screen). A man clamps a pair of pliers on the nose of a screaming man as the first man holds a long-nozzle handgun to the other man's head; the first man shoots three other men and we see blood smeared on the floors and walls. A woman in a military helicopter points a gun at a man, curses, fires several times, and the man holds up his prosthetic bloody hand to make a bullet ricochet and hit her in the chest (we some blood flowing); the woman falls out the door of the chopper and hangs on to the edge, but the man slams the door shut and we hear a loud, long scream as she falls.
► A man using a flame thrower blows up a bus and two men catch fire (they fall dead in high flames); a third victim puts out his flaming arm and leg with water from a bottle. A man shoots another man with a mortar and kills him in an explosion of fire; two other men catch fire, roll, and become still (they're likely dead).
► Several cybernetic men beat a man in a small room; they kick, punch, and throw him into the floor and walls and the leader levitates the victim high and drops him several times (the victim is left paraplegic and we see him in an electric wheelchair later). A man punches two policemen unconscious in an abandoned building and grabs and twists the genitals of a third cop wearing boxers, while his trousers are down, leaving the third cop screaming (the policemen were attempting to rape a woman by forcing her to perform oral sex). A man levitates dozens of men and himself twice, dropping the men hard on the floor. A man punches through shattering plate glass without harm and frees a woman; another man knocks him down and stomps on his face (we see this from the victim's viewpoint and we see him wake up later in the woods). A man in a wheelchair begins ranting and rambling and a man slaps him in the face to calm him.
► A man tells another man to eat someone's heart, and then says he is joking. A man says, "I killed all the wrong people." A man asks his son if he will spit out some blood and make his enemies spill their own blood.
► A man sees through water and looks at his lower legs and feet as a woman sticks a wrench in his eye and water drains; she puts a prosthetic cyber-arm with built-in brass knuckles on his elbow stump and a lower leg and foot screws itself into the thigh stump. A clone proto-baby falls out of the ceiling, attached to many tubes and appears asleep.
► We see dozens of bodies of dead men in shadows on shelves. A flashback twice shows a boy with a silver toy robot floating in slow motion and the camera cuts to the toy smashing to pieces on a wall.
LANGUAGE 9 - About 44 F-words and its derivatives, 3 obscene hand gestures, 17 scatological terms, 8 anatomical terms, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (insane, cripple, rabbit, pussy, whore, punching bag, killing machine, gayest, pigs, lying grasser, hippie, fancy pants, Charlie Chaplin), exclamations (shut-up), 5 religious profanities (GD), 4 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh God, Jesus, Lord).
SUBSTANCE USE - A man smokes and shares some sort of drugged cigarette with a woman and later smokes a similar drugged cigarette with a dying man, a man has double vision and sees two men smoking a drugged cigarette, a man in an apartment smokes a drugged cigarette and exhales a large ball of smoke, and a man grabs two hypodermics of adrenalin from a first aid kit and injects both of his thighs. A man drinks from a bottle of vodka on a bus, a man carries two bottles of wine in a park, three bottles of open liquor are seen on a table and two rocks glasses of amber liquor are on another table, and a man drinks from a bottle of unknown clear liquid in a lab. A man lights and smokes a cigarette on the street, and two men smoke regular cigarettes on a sidewalk.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Cybernetic cloning, bringing the dead back to life, human rights, amnesia, albinos, madness, people who are different, world conquest, power, evil, crime, vigilante justice, truth, relationships, friendship, family, responsibility.
MESSAGE - Resurrecting dead humans as cyborgs is dangerous and violates human rights.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.
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Become a member of our premium site for just $2/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.
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