First, allow me to start off by just taking a
few seconds to congratulate writer / director Alejo Mo-Sun on
his movie 'Hirokin'. I've been following the path of
this film for a little while, I know the trials and
tribulations that it took to get it made, and simply by the
fact that its completed and available for us to see is an
accomplishment. We here at the FCU know that making any
kind of movie is difficult, and we're really not even in a
position to criticize, much less actually make movie, not that
this is ever going to stop us. All that being said, we
have to judge the work like any other work, no matter what
path it took, and with that said, 'Hirokin' did leave us a
little wanting.
In the future humans have spread, like the virus that we are,
into the cosmos and have landed on a planet called Aradius
which we mercilessly mined for their valuable mineral
Araidium. I think that's what it is called. We've
also slaughtered, enslaved, and subjugated their people, as we
are wont to do. Our person of note on this planet is the
human Hirokin (Wes Bentley), a relatively simple man who just
wants to be left alone to be with his Aradian wife Terra
(Mercedes Manning) and their young son. Unfortunately,
the evil overlord of this planet, Griffin (Julian Sands) won't
allow this simple man to live his simple life as he has
kidnapped this family and put them in the arena for his rather
insane murder games.
Hirokin, left for dead, is rescued by the kindly warrior Honsu
(Rodney Charles) who tells this nearly dead dude to walk
towards the sun. Eventually, after walking in the desert
dying, Hirokin is found by Aradian rebel leader Moss (Angus
Macfadyen) and his hot daughter Maren (Laura Palmer) and they
will nurse my man back to health, and hope he joins them in
their rebellion to bring down the evil Griffin.
Unfortunately, Hirokin, once healthy, just wants revenge for
his slain wife and it isn't interested in Moss' rebellion… but
he isn't ready. He doesn't know The Way. What is
'The Way'? It's kind of like that thing Neo can
do? Being able to see stuff that most of us normal
people can't see? Apparently the Aradians used to have
this special power until we beat it out of them, but Moss
still kind of has it. Thing is, he sees that the force
is strong in this one, which I think kind of makes Hirokin an
Aradian. I'm a little sketchy here.
It's time for some Miyagi type training for
Hirokin where he will get repeatedly bitch slapped by Moss
until he knows The Way. And once he knows The Way,
Griffin and his oppressive right hand man Kore, decked out in
Crusader: No Remorse gear, will be made to suffer for their
crimes.
I wonder, especially with filmmakers, how often things they
have seen in other movies unconsciously affect their
work. For instance, as a single example of many in this
film, Kore.. who is very Vaderish to begin with… speaking with
a villager who just sold out my man Moss, with my man taking
offense with Kore as he wasn't honoring the deal, to which
Kore told him to be thankful that he is alive. Which
aligns very close to what Vader told Lando about their Han
Solo deal. My point being was there was lot of… say…
derivative moments in Hirokin, and I'm curious was this by
design, or perhaps things are ingrained into our psyche and we
actually believe that we have come up with some of these
things. I think someone should do a white paper on
this.
That nonsense aside, I will say this about 'Hirokin' in that
it is one ambitious piece of work. The other world
concept is ambitious, the scope is ambitious, and the style is
certainly ambitious… but it is this grand ambition that is
probably this films undoing. Far be it from me to tell a
dreamer to tone down his vision, but this vision could've used
some toning down. Some streamlining. Some
compression… if only to make it more manageable.
The scope was so far reaching that there were times, at least
for me, that following the story became a bit
challenging. And while we do understand that words are
cheap, and action can be expensive, I just wanted fewer
words. Plus the words weren't always clear, particular
when Angus MacFadyen got going. I could hear what my man
was saying, I'm just wasn't understanding it. Since the
pace of the film was so slow, and since a lot of what was
going on screen wasn't that interesting, we were left focusing
on things such as the derivative nature, the fact that Wes
Bentley's trademark intense glare can't substitute for actual
sword fighting, wondering if Angus MacFadyen is crazy for real
or is it just typecasting, or just being amazed that beautiful
women must seriously grow on trees in the movie business
because even this lower budgeted epic had more than its fair
share. Truth be told, the cast on the whole was very
impressive, including FCU fave Max Martini and the lovely
Jessica Szhor in addition to the cast members we already
mentioned.
I really wanted to like 'Hirokin' and there were things to
like about this film. It looked nice, had some great
shots of some open vistas, and it had some interesting themes,
but what it needed was a much tighter edit to move things
along faster, and also to keep this particular scatterbrained
movie watcher's mind from wandering, and a more focused story
to get the audience more involved into this story. And
while I do recognize that this is no real compliment, take
solace in that I have seen worse. Way worse.
