“THE GREEN HORNET” PRESS PREVIEW
By golly …
It’s our JAY CHOU, Asian pop superstar starring in the Hollywood remake of “THE GREEN HORNET”.
Make no bones about it, but JAY Sir had been widely reported to have that teeny grasp of the English language.
Despite this obvious fact, he has beaten many notable actors on track to win the coveted role of KATO, once helmed by the late Kung Fu God BRUCE LEE.
KATO is the dream role that every Chinese action actor would want to lay hands on.
Whatever been said about JAY CHOU learning his lines phonetically, then he has more or less compensated for this flaw by “electrifying” the screen with his charm and wit.
He’s a bankable ASIAN A-lister.
STEPHEN CHOW, well-known Hong Kong actor/ producer was originally roped in to direct and play KATO, but opted out due to confounding “creative differences”.
It surely would have been interesting to see how STEPHEN CHOW renders this movie in his brand of comedic style that we love.
That is, if he had chosen to direct.
Alas, it was never meant to be.
Now, the story:
BRITT REID (SETH ROGEN) is a dead pan and laid-back party animal who lives a life of waste. When his father suddenly dies from a deadly bee sting (or perhaps, he has been murdered?), the family’s media empire becomes infested with ruthless heroin smugglers.
BRITT decides to form a collaborative alliance with KATO (JAY CHOU) his father’s trusted mechanic.
Together they spring to action to combat the bad guys by masquerading as villians. The most sinister of the baddies is the crime boss CHUDNOFSKY (CHRISTOPHER WALTZ), a Russian mobster who is uniting the criminal families of Los Angeles under his command.
This is the one his father was trying to expose.
It is KATO, his enthusiastic sidekick, who has the brawn and the brains and is a much better fighter.
He even develops a car outfitted with several gadgets and weapons, which they knighted as “The Black Beauty”.
The KATO character is a jack-of-all-trades genius, who combines awesome martial-arts skills with mechanical wizardry.
The pulse of the film is the relationship between the partner-protagonists. ROGEN and CHOU display a great chemistry together.
The casting of the JAY CHOU as KATO was initially, one of unease.
The American film makers were accused in the blogosphere of bypassing Asian-American hopefuls in a brazen attempt to capture the Asian markets.
The film’s producer, NEAL H. MORITZ told the press that he was concerned about JAY CHOU’s lack of fluency in English. At first.
By the time filming began, he had concluded that JAY CHOU’s struggles with the language made his character KATO more endearing.
For sure, SETH ROGEN looks sheepish in his black mask and costume.
And CAMERON DIAZ is just a “filler” for the movie, in a role of a shared lust object for our heroes to drool at.
You wouldn’t nullify GREEN HORNET as a total heart-stomping action thriller. Not when you have a comedian like SETH ROGEN.
More buzz than stings? Perhaps.
THE GREEN HORNET is a blockbuster that borders on part humor, part drama and was shot conventionally, then transferred to 3D.
This movie delivers about what you’d expect:
plenty of fights, car chases, explosions, shootouts and neat visual effects a la JAMES BOND.
Plus a first-rate 3D post rendering.
The humor is a hilarious fun-and-miss, more often than not.
Whilst in the West, everybody is debating whether SETH ROGEN should have played the lead, elsewhere in ASIA, all eyes are resting on JAY CHOU.
As KATO, JAY has displayed that he has the grit and mettle to play a superhero.
He’s superb.
With everything in place, the most serious challenge THE GREEN HORNET faces now is to recoup its $130 million budget, a sizable chunk of which resulted from a late decision to rework Kato-Vision in 3-D.
Can this goal be achieved?
Only time will tell with your help.
Go watch it for JAY CHOU’s sake.
At least he promises to take us on a fun-fun ride.
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