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Rating:  -
I absolutely loved this movie! I cried my eyes out the first time I saw it. I once fell HARD for a street-wise bad boy myself and could relate to this movie on so many levels. Like Claire & Jack, my bad boy and I came from completely opposite backgrounds, he was the son of a non-functioning drunk and I grew up a preacher's kid. The attraction between Claire & Jack made perfect sense to me although, to any sane person looking on, it didnt make any sense at all. Like Claire, I was irrisistably drawn to my bad boy, could NOT get enough of him and would have willingly followed him to hell and back if he'd asked. My friends (and his) tried to warn me off and, yes, I had my heart bludgeoned on several occasions, but I never gave up on him. There was just something about him, so much potential - I just KNEW he could be great if I could only make HIM realize it. Over the course of our crazy relationship, I left home, much to my parents' distress but, thankfully, I didnt completely lose my mind like Claire did - I never lost my self respect. In the end, it was a hard road and I lost alot of my innocence; I'd been sheltered so much in my life up 'til then. Teaching him how to love and give and be thankful toughened me up, made me stronger emotionally, but it was worth every moment of self doubt, worth every tear. And now, my REFORMED bad boy and I have been happily married for 16 years this month. He's a wonderful, patient father to our son and is a sucessful, respected business man in our town. I wish they'd make a sequel to this movie so we can find out if Claire & Jack are as lucky in love as we've been!!
Rating:  -
this one was released fresh on the heels of his oscar win in " the pianist " he plays a small time hustler who has literary aspirations. adrian does his performance raw and street, making the most of a screenplay, which is very well done. jon seda as his sidekick is equally entertaining and charlotte ayanna is good as the straight a student who tries to do a " florence nightingale" on brody's character, but succumbs to the low-end kind of life. charlotte has a great body and she shows it quite a bit here. Pam Grier ( whatever happened to her ? ) is excellent as the vice cop who's on his case. she is a good character actress, who never seems to get enough work or enough credit.
Rating: -
This wonderful near miss of a movie was terribly treated by movie execs and critcs but the performance of Charlotte Ayanna alone is enough to make it deserving of a much better fate. From the moment she says "I'm dead" to the moment Jack goes to jail this flick is perfect and her performance as a devastated young woman on a downward spiral is painfully beautiful. Unfortunately, some clumsy dialog early in the flick and at the end made me wince but it wasn't enough to dilute the power of what Miss Ayanna did. This gal knows pain and was able to communicate it with breath taking honesty. And did I mention Adrian Brody? His performance is so real and watchable it's hard to understand how this movie passed so quickly under the radar. But all involved, including the director who did some wonderful things especially in that section I referred to above, should know that this movie will be penetrating the popular conciousness for decades to come. A special thanks to Miss Ayanna for having the courage to go deep into her soul where the meanings are.
Rating: -
This dark drama turns precipitiously toward Greek tragedy before ending with brief optimism, that apparently has not yet been realized in a sequel.
A crime drama, character study and love story, "Love The Hard Way" is an unrelentingly interesting and involving feast for the senses with some incongruous moments that are saved by searing performances from the two leads -- Columbia University student Claire (Charlotte Ayanna) and Jack (Adrien Brody), the amoral leader of a group of confidence men and small time crooks.
The film traces the romantic and unromantic interactions between the two and intermingles a multi-layered and multi-faceted story about two people and change -- one that promises to change but increasingly exhibits betrayal, and another has everything going for her, who then changes much for the worse. While every step of the story stairacse is not credible, every moment of the chemistry between the two very beautiful leads is credible and burns up the screen (big or little) with passion.
The story, and the personal interactions between the characters, are all aided by on-location filming in gritty and grimy sections of New York City. The photography is noirish with dark streets, half-lit rooms, rainy evenings and all the trappings of a Richard Widmark crime drama from 1955. A good cast of relative unknowns supports the two leads in this interesting modern take on film noir.
Also look for Adrien Brody in two other fine dramas -- his Academy Award-winning performance in "The Pianist" and the much lower profile but still rewarding "Oxygen" where he plays a character more in keeping with Jack from this story.
Rating:  -
LOVE THE HARD WAY (LtHW) and TEN BENNY/NOTHING TO LOSE would be an appropriate Adrien Brody double-feature because both had me muttering "Dumbass!" every time the protagonists acted like jerks. But don't blame Brody; he and the cast did their best with the material they had. LtHW was a shelved indie released to cash in on Brody's post-Oscar fame. Alas, this alleged romantic crime drama proves that some unreleased films should stay that way! Maybe something got lost in translation as German co-writer/director Peter Sehr and French co-writer Marie Noelle adapted a Chinese novel into a New York story with mostly American characters. Guess I should've sensed trouble when antihero Jack (Brody) wears a snakeskin jacket obviously intended to make him look cool; I couldn't help thinking, "Nicolas Cage called from the set of WILD AT HEART; he wants his jacket back!" Brody looks hot despite the heavyhanded "cool" touches, which at least renders the film more watchable, as does LtHW's striking use of NYC locations like the now-defunct Screening Room, where heroine Claire (Charlotte Ayanna) works part-time, and a former office building in the South Bronx that Jack and his partner-in-crime Charlie (Jon Seda) call home. Jack and Charlie's world brings to mind the grim-and-gritty quality of 1970s NYC-set thrillers (or maybe it's just the DVD's dingy print :-). The guys support themselves with thievery and con jobs. Their female confederates play hookers luring unsuspecting foreign businessmen in posh Manhattan hotels, only to have Jack and Charlie bust in, posing as cops willing to accept "bribes" from the eager-for-secrecy businessmen. These scams are LtHW's best bits, but then, I enjoy con games as long as they're only in movies! :-) However, Jack supposedly has a poet's soul beneath his streetwise demeanor, writing the Great American Pulp Fiction Novel in his spare time. He meets clean-cut Columbia University student Claire, and as the apparent opposites attract, the film turns schizoid. Despite his attraction to her, Jack realizes he and Claire are from different worlds -- but when he dumps her, the film stops being a grim-and-gritty crime drama and becomes a different 1970s-style film: one of those downbeat, joyless sex dramas that were so prevalent back then. After the breakup, angelic Claire becomes an "avenging angel" (her words) as she refuses to take no for an answer (Jack's told her all along what a scoundrel he is, so you'd think she'd have seen it coming -- especially after catching him in bed with one of the bogus "hookers"!), sending everyone involved on a downward spiral as I kept checking the clock to see how much longer this dreariness would go on. The actors are fine, but the script feels like a series of sample film noir scenes somebody wrote for film school, not a well-rounded story with any sense of internal logic. Though Brody's acting is terrific and he looks great (despite that jacket :-), the script and sluggish pacing defeats him, rendering Jack more obnoxious and smug than sexy and charismatic. Jack and Charlie are apparently supposed to be lovable rogues, but when Claire's ex and his Columbia U. pals start a fight with Jack and Charlie at a local night spot, I rooted for the collegians to mop the floor with them. (SPOILER ALERT...I cheered aloud when Detective Linda Fox finally catches the schemers red-handed and hauls 'em to the hoosegow for a 2-year stretch!...END SPOILER ALERT) As Claire, pretty Ayanna has a likable presence. She and Brody generate heat in their love scenes (which at least perk up the dour proceedings -- especially Brody's lean, sexy physique! Yum! :-), but screenwriters Sehr and Noelle seem unsure what she's supposed to be. Good-girl Claire is described as complex and multifaceted, but she merely comes off as erratic: first she's a jaded banterer, then a sweet, lovestruck babe-in-the-woods, then a possessive, self-destructive FATAL ATTRACTION type. Then sleazeball Jack suddenly shows a sensitive side as well as literary aspirations, schlepping around in a guilt-ridden, devastated daze as Claire shoehorns herself into the hooker/businessman scam, degrading herself in every way to teach Jack a lesson. Apart from the stupidity of degrading yourself instead of degrading the person who's done you wrong, if Sehr and Noelle wanted to make a movie about such a person, why didn't they foreshadow the characters' nutjob potential instead of having it happen out of nowhere? As I watched this DVD, I felt like I was switching channels between several different glum, no-fun movies. Still, every so often there are amusing scenes taunting us with what LtHW might've been with better writing and directing; for example, Jack has a tape of traffic noises with which he fools people who call him on his cell phone wondering where he is. As a writer, I also enjoyed the scenes with Jack in his self-storage space writing his novel-in-progress. Pam Grier gives the film wit and style as Linda Fox, the undercover detective playing cat-and-mouse with Jack and Charlie. When Fox catches Jack with the faux hookers' hotel room number, #1865, and tries to nail him with it, the guys cover up by pretending they're history buffs (Jack: "{1865 is} the year of Lee's surrender at Appomattox." Charlie: "It was a dark day for the Confederacy, ma'am."). Like Claire's loony behavior, this bit of daftness comes from nowhere, but at least it's funny and clever. Another atypically breezy scene: the playful "interview" between Jack and "future Nobel Prize winner" Claire. Too bad the fun's leeched from even that scene later on when we hear a tape of it under tragic circumstances; it's like LtHW hates to actually *entertain* the audience for long. The DVD packaging screams "Academy Award Winner* Adrien Brody," with the asterisk meaning "*For Best Actor in 2002's THE PIANIST." I half-expected to see another asterisk next to the banner "'Two BIG Thumbs UP' -- Ebert & Roeper," since I can't imagine why they gave this depressing mess even one little thumb up, let alone 2 BIG Thumbs Up. To paraphrase Webb Wilder in HORROR HAYRIDE, I gave it a finger! :-) Fans of NYC and the film's cast may find the documentary amongst the DVD's extras worth a look, though even *that* is longer than it really needs to be.
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