Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Review Rating: 6 Gas Pellets

After the violent death of his father, spoiled newspaper heir Britt Reid takes on the mantle of the Green Hornet with his faithful sidekick Kato, to fight crime.

Why? I know there’s a huge lack of creativity in Hollywood at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they get to do this to the Green Hornet. It’s rather like The Spirit, that iconic Eisner epic that when updated for movie status in the 2000’s failed miserably. Not even fantastic casting could save that movie, and again, same thing goes here. Of course, I do not consider fantastic casting to be the epitome of white-guy-awkwardness-fame, Seth Rogan. It was surprising to see Chinese pop singer Jay Chou in the ass-kicking role of Kato, I was under the impression it was going to be someone else. His character, as usual, proves to be the only worthwhile thing about the movie and its plot.

So Brett Reid is a very spoiled son of a newspaper owner, has no direction, can’t get anywhere with girls, and has no intention of doing diddly in the way of becoming his father’s protégé, until of course his untimely death. In desperate need of a proper cup of coffee, Brett takes up with Kato, the Asian car genius who worked for his father and made a whole gadget-gizmo just to make a good cup of coffee. It turns out, Kato’s a full-on genius when it comes to designing and making things, and of course Reid uses that to his full advantage. After a drunk night of stealing the bronze head of his father’s memorial statue and clumsily saving people from a violent crime, Reid decides he wants to do this all the time with Kato, as the Green Hornet. And uses his connections with the newspaper to begin demanding, with all the panache of a five year old, that GR gets as much publicity, good bad or otherwise, as possible. About this point Cameron Diaz shows up as Lenore Case, whom of course both Reid and Kato want, who ends up as Reid’s secretary and unofficial sleuth and mastermind for the Green Hornet. Which is just sad, I liked Diaz in The Mask as this kind of character, but come on, I thought we were done with that. The Green Hornet continues on his merry way, trying to fight all the bad guys while battling his own personal demons, including a way too long fight between Reid and Kato himself, over what I took to be a matter of jealousy. Everything leads up to a big confrontation between the underworld bad guys, the above-board bad guys, and even the police, all up against the Black Beauty, the badass Hornet car designed and built by Kato, which means none of the bad guys stand a chance!

And lastly, yes it is in 3-D. No I did not watch it that way. There is absolutely no reason for any part of The Green Hornet to be in 3-D, and those still-mind shots for Kato, plus the wrap-the-plot-up-in-a-neat-bow 3-D realization moment for Reid at the end of the movie are just pathetic. Believe me, for a movie made from a show that had Bruce Lee in it back in the 70’s, this is a very poor showing indeed. The Green Hornet gets 6 gas pellets, to hopefully put me to sleep so I won’t throw popcorn at the screen.