Hardcore review – plotless, characterisation-free cinema du Xbox

Director Ilya Naishuller's gory, first-person action film is like a video game in which we leap, climb, kill and find ourselves bored silly

For folks who are too lazy to play their own video games, there's the movie Hardcore. For 90 minutes, first-time feature director Ilya Naishuller throttles your central nervous system with a stretched-out spasm of first-person action. Run here, jump there, slice this carotid artery, shatter that skull. The plot, what little of it there is, has mute amnesia victim Henry (ostensibly "you"), avoiding death at every turn and frantically racing to a series of checkpoints delivered to his phone by a reappearing guide in the form of a manic (and homophobic) Sharlto Copley.

From an acrobatic point of view, all the GoPro choreography is impressive. "How'd they do THAT?" you'll wonder for the first 15 minutes. But as the relentless shaky-cam and ear-splitting weapons blasts soldier on, this query changes to: "Do I have any aspirin in my bag?" Hardcore taps into a 14-year-old boy's brain, marinating in a vat of Mountain Dew, fantasising about high-energy kills, lusty women and loud music. Perhaps interesting for sociological study, but as a movie, it is vulgar, boring and embarrassing.