The first trailer for Hardcore Henry, a sci-fi action movie shot entirely from the hero’s perspective, debuted before its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last year. All of the positive buzz the film generated there paved the way for a theatrical release later this year and a brand new, full-length trailer that debuted online this week.
And much as with the first trailer, everything we see of Hardcore Henry suggests that the film will have no problem living up to its title.
Produced by Wanted and Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov and directed by Ilya Naishuller, Hardcore Henry unfolds from the point of view of a man who’s been resurrected from the dead by his scientist wife (The Equalizer‘s Haley Bennett) and turned into a near-indestructible cyborg. Shortly after his resurrection, his wife is kidnapped and Henry must fight his way through wave after wave of hired soldiers to rescue her. He’s assisted on his mission by a mysterious British man named Jimmy, played by District 9 and Elysium actor Sharlto Copley.
If this all sounds familiar to gamers, that’s because Naishuller is an avid video gamer himself, and channeled his love for first-person shooter games into the grand experiment that is Hardcore Henry.
Naishuller first garnered attention for his 2013 short film Bad Motherf–ker, which used first-person perspective to tell a story about a mysterious protagonist’s pursuit of a man carrying a mysterious, glowing device. The five-minute film has been viewed more than 29 million times since it debuted online in March 2013.
Hardcore Henry won the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and was the subject of a bidding war after its successful premiere there.
Hardcore Henry is scheduled for a limited release in theaters that kicks off April 8.