"The Green Hornet"

"The Green Hornet" used to be a radio show many years ago, and it was also a short-lived TV series starring Bruce Lee. This is the first movie adaptation of it, however, and with Seth Rogen as the title character I thought it would have a good combination of humor and action. Unfortunately not: there only a few choice action scenes, and far too little comedy.

Britt Reid (Seth Rogen, "Observe and Report") is a spoiled party boy whose father owns the Daily Herald, a newspaper in Los Angeles. When his father passes away from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, Britt inherits his father's gigantic house, all of its employees, and, of course, the newspaper. When he fires most of the employees and then wakes up one morning to find that his coffee has been made poorly, he demands to know who usually makes his coffee, and finds that it is Kato (musician Jay Chou, "True Legend"), who also has been maintaining and upgrading the bevy of luxury cars that sit in his father's garage. Kato is re-hired and he and Britt soon embark on their adventures as crime-fighters; however, they decide to confuse the city and police into thinking that they are the "bad guys," and soon both the police AND the "real" bad guys are after them.

Seth Rogen does an okay job in this movie but Kato, who is skilled in martial arts, really steals the show. If it wasn't for Kato, Rogen's character (Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet) would have been killed off at the very beginning of the movie. Cameron Diaz has a supporting part as Lenore Case, Reid's secretary at the newspaper, but her part really isn't necessary, and to be honest I wasn't that impressed with her performance. There's also an A-lister that has a small cameo at the beginning of the film (which isn't even listed on IMDB, actually) and he was amusing to watch, but unfortunately he gets killed off about five minutes into the film.

Maybe see this movie. Near the middle of the film, I was actually leaning towards giving it a "No" review, because it didn't really impress me at all, but the action sequences in the last half hour are definitely worth seeing. I still don't understand why they would want the police to think that they are the bad guys, but it's possible I'm just missing something. Kato is fun to watch in action, but next to him Rogen's character appears to be just a bored billionaire with too much time on his hands.

"The Green Hornet" is in theaters on January 14th.

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