There is one fatal flaw in all superheroes. One weakness that makes the bad guys win when they shouldn’t. This weakness is their goodness. All a villain must do to get the superhero to leave them unscathed is threaten a human life. But, what happens when the superhero is bad? When the villain isn’t so sure the superhero is a hero at all? The movie “The Green Hornet” tries to answer this question.

    The title character (Seth Rogen) and his faithful partner Kato (Jay Chou) are good guys pretending to be bad guys to dupe the real villains. Although the performance by Rogen is unimaginative, and the villain (Christoph Waltz) becomes unbearable to watch, the awesome fight sequences, cool special effects, and Kato’s badass character ultimately make this movie enjoyable.

    The movie starts off with a crazy party. Britt Reid (Rogen) is shrinking away from his responsibilities and trashing a hotel room. The hotel room becomes a metaphor for his life as we see that he has no job, no ambition, and no place of his own. His father (Tom Wilkinson) wishes that he were more like him, writing editorials to stop crime in Los Angeles. When his father suddenly dies and leaves Reid his newspaper empire he realizes, with the help of Kato (his father’s longtime employee) that he has been wasting his life.

    This revelation causes him to don a mask and become a superhero fighting off the crime his father wrote against. But was his father’s death really an accident? And how long can the Green Hornet cause trouble for the villain before he fights back?

    Even though it sounds like it, this is not a superhero movie. It’s a comedy, starring Rogen, playing the same character he always plays, a bumbling moron, who by the end finally realizes that he needs to become an adult and be responsible.

    The premise of the movie is such a good one, a superhero pretending to be a villain in order to trick the bad guys, but Rogen falls short. He blathers on through car chases and distracts the audience with random punch lines when we should be focused on the action. But it isn’t really his fault; he is not an action star. He is made for comedy.

    But Rogen is an Oscar winner compared to Waltz, who plays an annoying villain so obsessed with trying to seem threatening that he comes off as childish and weak. When the movie begins, Waltz uses sarcasm to destroy an associate and then blows up his business in a fiery explosion. As the movie progresses, he uses the same shtick over and over and it just gets boring. He is so wrapped up in trying to be a caricature of a villain and trying to be funny that he comes off as lame and unfunny. The only bright light among the acting performances is Kato. He is the real hero and star of the movie. He is a fighting machine who matches Rogen’s idiotic humor with quick wit and hilarity. He is able to slow down time, sees every weapon the thugs have, and uses his karate skills to defeat them. He is the one I want saving me when I am being mugged, not the Green Hornet who cries for Kato to save him and then tries to act as if he is the hero.

    The fight sequences that feature Kato and the Green Hornet really make this movie something to see. The action is slowed and the audience is able to move along with Kato as he beats up the bad guys. We are able to see inside his mind. And the explosions surrounding each fight are so outrageous, they are hilarious.The explosions that fill the movie, from a tricked out car explosion to a restaurant fight scene, are large but not overpowering. They give just enough energy to the movie to make it enjoyable.

    So while Rogen and Waltz’s performances become tired and overbearing, the character of Kato, the mind-blowing special effects, and cool fight scenes save this movie from being unbearable. But, as with the Green Hornet, you must take the bad in order to get the good.