Parental Guidance: Hardcore Henry Looks Like a Video Game, but Don’t Take Your Kids to It

Rating: R, for non-stop bloody brutal violence and mayhem, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug use.

Everything opening this week is R-rated, but the most R-rated of them all is Hardcore Henry. Like Deadpool, this may look like a fun movie to your kids, especially if they’re into video games – namely, those of the first-person-shooter variety. But it’s totally unsuitable for them. The MPAA rating says it all: This film is just incessant in its brutal, bloody violence. The premise is clever, though. The whole thing takes place from the perspective of a character named Henry, who wakes up in a lab with no memory of who he is or how he got there. A beautiful scientist (Haley Bennett) is attaching prosthetic limbs to his battered, tatted body – and she says she’s his wife. But he quickly realizes he’s in danger and must go on the run throughout Moscow from the various bad guys who are after him – including a diabolical albino with telekinetic powers (Danila Kozlovsky) and his army of cyborg henchmen. Writer-director Ilya Naishuller placed GoPro cameras on a bunch of stuntmen to create the images we see: running, jumping, climbing, chasing, crashing, fighting, shooting, and killing. It is a non-stop bloodbath. Henry also visits a Russian brothel where dozens of women are dressed (or, rather, undressed) identically in black panties and platinum blonde wigs. Various characters do massive amounts of drugs. Oh yes, and there’s a ton of language, but that seems almost quaint compared to the other hardcore activities going on here. FYI, if you’re an adult thinking of seeing Hardcore Henry – and you have trouble with motion sickness – you may want to avoid it. The trailer alone will give you an idea of the dizzying effects of the first-person perspective.