Die Hart: Kevin Hart’s wish to be an action star is mostly an excuse to mock them

Kevin Hart and Nathalie Emmanuel in 'Die Hart'. Image: Supplied

By Tevya Turok Shapiro

21 Feb 2023

Kevin Hart plays a version of himself trying to become a ‘leading man’ in his new action comedy, 'Die Hart', which premiered in Johannesburg on 16 February between sold-out shows of his stand-up tour, ‘Reality Check’.

Die Hart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me0TBxA1ITM

In a nutshell

Die Hart is a satirical action comedy starring Kevin Hart as a fictionalised version of himself that feels typecast as the comedy wingman to bona fide action stars like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.

After flying off the handle on a talk show, he is approached by a respected auteur director (Jean Reno) who offers him a career-making role on the condition that he can graduate from ‘action hero school’, which is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds and run by the psychotic Ron Wilcox (John Travolta).

The film was written by Derek Kolstad, creator of the John Wick franchise, but it’s not actually a bid to transform Kevin Hart’s reputation. Die Hart is directed by Eric Appel who made the slapstick cop-comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine and has similarly fluffy situational humour, complemented by regular single-shot espresso servings of action and suspense.

Where to watch it

Die Hart is available in South Africa in cinemas from 22 February and on Prime Video from 24 February.

Also read in Daily Maverick: The Last of Us – better than any video game adaption deserves to be

What’s the vibe

Although the trailer suggests Die Hart might be more serious than his other films, the premise is actually a smokescreen for his typical style of self-deprecative comedy, so expect a similar performance to that of his other action-comedy work like Central Intelligence or The Man From Toronto. One important way in which it’s different from his previous action-comedy work is that rather than being a comedy sidekick, a “comedy frontkick” – the likes of Inspector Clouseau and Cato from the Pink Panther movies – the trope of the idiot hero, flanked by a more capable companion. In Hart’s case it’s Nathalie Emmanuel who shows off her athleticism in real choreographed fight scenes kicking Kevin’s butt.

Die Hart also has low-key thematic similarities to other films in which actors have played themselves like Being John Malkovich (the freaky, worthy poster-child of this unusual genre), This Is The End (in which almost the entire cast is playing themselves), or more recently, Nicolas Cage’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Die Hart is especially similar to Unbearable Weight in that the supposedly mind-bending meta-commentary of satirising one’s self is ironically an excuse to make the same kind of action comedy that the film makes fun of – asking the viewer to consider whether art that’s bad on purpose is still bad. In the genre of celebrities playing themselves, Die Hart actually feels more similar to the skits of Saturday Night Live, in terms of the bluntness of the humour, the self-roasting, and the subverting of expectations.

Kevin Hart and Nathalie Emmanuel in 'Die Hart'. Image: Supplied

A closer look

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what does that say about actors who play themselves in movies? Something that these performances almost always have in common is a level of self-mockery, and that supposedly indicates some humility to the audience. In order to play oneself that way, an actor has to acknowledge and typically exaggerate their public persona, but ironically “as themself” roles are often used to shift a celebrity’s public persona by showing that they’re a good sport and have a sense of humour about themselves.

Kevin Hart is the centre of a comedy empire. If he really wanted to push his career towards the likes of Keanu Reeves, he wouldn’t draw so much attention to it by writing himself into a movie saying things like “Don’t be a bitch Kevin. Be academy award winner Matt Damon!” Playing oneself in a film allows an actor to express their awareness of things they couldn’t in a different role. At the beginning of the film, Hart lets loose on a talk show where he’s supposed to be promoting a new movie:

“The movie’s garbage. How many times do you need to see me in a car with Dwayne The Rock Johnson and we’re saving lives and I’m the comedy sidekick and I’ve got a catchphrase, ‘oh hell no!’”

By starting the film this way and then still taking on his usual self-deprecative onscreen shtick, the real Hart is telling the audience that he’s not bothered by the public perception of him as “America’s funny guy”, while subtly suggesting that that image is one-dimensional.

Hart told us proudly of the diversity of his career and that this caricature of himself as a one-trick pony is to throw his audience off the comedic scent: “With Die Hart, we’re playing around with the false reality of Kevin Hart, and it's a genre that not many people can do. There's art within the thing, and you can either choose to see it or you can ignore it. The art is, I'm making you think about the idea – ‘is Kevin really giving a wink or message that he wants to do this and they won't let him, and this is how he's trying to do it?’ That's the joke within the joke, and the joke continues, right? Die Hart will be a space that gets to part one, part two, part three, and it's very similar to what Austin Powers did – [Mike Myers] was still able to leave and do whatever.

The perception of something can be skewed based off of what you choose to be aware of or not, right? I got about 22 years in this business now, and there’s nothing that I haven't done. So when you talk about being a leading man and do it in ways that showcase your talent, I could point to a lot of things. In the thriller, True Story, I'm a killer; The Upside is an emotional drama with me and Bryan Cranston where I'm the lead; Fatherhood, which is a drama about me as a father after the death of my wife, or Lift, a heist comedy thriller I have coming out this year.

You can really check down the box. I'm at a place in my career where I'm making the choices and I'm making the content or developing the content. I've done a great job of choosing my co-stars to help elevate and raise the individual star, from the likes of Vice Cube in the beginning, to Will Ferrell, Dwayne, Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes - these are all calculated decisions, but people don't understand sometimes that I control 'em.”

Hart has certainly done a good job spotlighting himself by strategically picking his co-stars, but in the case of Die Hart, the reason he looks good next to Travolta, Emmanuel and Reno is that he’s taken them out of their natural habitats. Travolta has played some very funny roles over the years but his dry and deranged humour in Die Hart makes you feel like you’re going slightly insane. Emmanuel does get a chance to show off her combat acting but both her and Reno’s writing are yawn-inducing. So of course, the only one who really gets to shine is Hart, stupid, lovable and hilarious as always.

Kevin Hart and Nathalie Emmanuel in 'Die Hart'. Image: Supplied

Die Hart was originally part of the now-defunct short-form streaming platform, Quibi. Split into ten bite-sized episodes of seven to nine minutes, the Quibi format might have suited South Africa well since load shedding seldom relents long enough to finish a film, but Hart made the decision to join it into a single feature for the international release, a decision presumably influenced by the return of audiences to cinemas.

It's an interesting stepping stone in Hart’s career. The choices he made around the film’s casting, format and premiering in South Africa in the same week as his stand-up tour are all evidence of the expansion of his proud comedy empire. The film satirizes his reputation but with an intention to bolster it, and similarly, makes fun of action as a genre while unapologetically being an action comedy. But no matter how much you read into the meta-commentary of it, it’s still a Kevin Hart movie much like any of his others, and whether you enjoy it will be largely contingent on whether you’re entertained by a tiny manic comedian saying “oh hell no!” DM/ML

Die Hart is available in South Africa in cinemas from 22 February and on Prime Video from 24 February.

Disclosure: Prime Video paid for Tevya Turok Shapiro’s flight and accommodation to attend the premiere of Die Hart.

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Die Hart

In a nutshell

Where to watch it

What’s the vibe

A closer look