Hardcore Henry (Ilya Naishuller, 2015)

This is by far the most accomplished transference of the FPS experience to the big screen to date, told entirely from a first-person perspective, as a man wakes up as a cyborg, immediately plunged into fleeing for his life through Moscow. It's also soon as interesting as watching someone else playing an FPS, while the non-stop pace is simply exhausting. Even the most OTT shooter games have their quiet moments to allow not only for a pause for breath, but for mood to build up.
Not in Naishuller's macho Russian/adolescent wank fantasy world, though, where the chief aim is to come up with not only a higher body count achieved by the protagonist than ever seen before but ever more tasteless ways to achieve that. The effect is mind-numbing and worryingly desensitising: this may be one of the first cases I've ever seen, and God knows I'm no opponent of extreme violence as entertainment, where I've really questioned the validity of allowing anyone with an impressionable mind to see it. You can't help marvelling at the sheer technical skill involved in the enterprise, and yet feel morally aghast at the result too.

4/10