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Director : Michel Gondry |
 
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When Britt Reid was a young boy his mother died, and his father running a large newspaper didn't have much time for him. One day when he got sent home from school again, his father tore the head off of his model superhero and threw it away.
Flash forward twenty years and two gangsters meet and one of them, Chudnofsky, with a double barrel pistol takes out his young rival and his men. Meanwhile party animal Britt Reid is having a good time. Making the front cover of his father's paper while popping a bottle of champagne does not make his father happy. When his father suddenly died Britt is now in charge of a media empire.
At first Seth has no interest in the paper : he just isn't interested. Britt meets Kato who works on his father's cars and also makes his coffee. Kato is a mechanical genius and had built a super car for Britt's father.
Britt goes out with kato and Britt gets even for his father by ripping the head off his father's statue. While they are out a gang of kids terrorize a young couple and Britt tries to stop them and Kato with with super karate skills comes to his rescue.
Britt and Kato enjoyed their night out and decide to try it again.
Britt- "Ok, think about this Kato. What is the one insanely stupid thing every superhero has in common?"
Kato- "Tights?"
Britt- "No."
Kato- "Cape?"
Britt- "No Kato. It's that everyone knows that they're the good guy, the hero. You know? All the bad guy has to do is start capping some innocent people and he's got the good guy by the nuts! He's gotta do whatever he says! It's in every movie, it's in every comic book, it's in everything, it's so stupid. But, if the bad guy thought the good guy was also a bad guy, he wouldn't be able to do that. That's what we'll do differently! We will pose as villains, but we'll act like heroes."
Britt thinks that he and Kato have been wasting their lives. Seth goes down to his newspaper with Kato, and tells them he wants the dangerous Green Hornet all over the newspaper. When the Green Hornet and Kato destroy one of Chudnofsky's meth labs, they become a targets. Britt and Kato start cleaning up the town with their toys, but the police are chasing them too. Kato makes a hornet gun for Britt and makes some more Black Beauty cars.
When Chudnofsky buries them inside their car, Kato sets off a bomb that lets them escape. Chudnofsky attacks, but the bumbling, wise-cracking argumentative friends get away. Chudnofsky decides to take on a villainous persona as Bllodnofsky.
Britt and Kato have a falling out over a girl and Britt starts to take his role at the newspaper seriously. Britt finds out that the DA had an agreement with Chudnofsky and with his father. When his father balked at the arrangement, he was killed.
In his review Roger Ebert said: "The Green Hornet is an almost unendurable demonstration of a movie with nothing to be about. Although it follows the rough storyline of previous versions of the title, it neglects the construction of a plot engine to pull us through. There are pointless dialogue scenes going nowhere much too slowly, and then pointless action scenes going everywhere much too quickly."
The movie is based on a radio program that debuted in 1936. The movie was campy by design and it was interesting to have the real superhero be the sidekick, while the superhero, taking credit for the crime fighting was sort of a bumbling fool. The movie consciously pokes fun at the superhero movie genre, but falls short of really joining it. That is really too bad, because The Green Hornet is an iconic superhero with a long pedigree who deserves a good movie.
