For quite a while, I really loved The Harder They Come. The music is fantastic. The cinematography and location shooting are gorgeous. And, most of all, I was simply fascinated by the Jamaican dialect of English exhibited in the film. A word of warning: this film is in English, but it is very difficult to understand, almost impossible at times. The Jamaicans accent their words completely differently, and their speech patterns have an entirely different cadence than ours do. And I liked the plot a lot for about half or more of the running time. I was genuinely involved with the characters and their stories. Unfortunately, after a certain point, it becomes very morally dubious. Yes, the main character, Ivan (Jimmy Cliff), is not treated too fairly by Preacher. However, it's hard to root for a hero who stabs a man in the back because he confiscated his bicycle. It would be different if the audience were not asked to root for Ivan, but we plainly are. He thinks he'd make a great singer, but the producer of his record refuses to let the radio stations play it. After a while, Ivan is forced to make a living by selling ganja - which goes really well, obviously. When a police officer attempts to pull him over for speeding, he ices the copper. Then a bit later he kills three more, and basically goes on a killing spree. All of a sudden, people want desperately to hear his record on the radio. The producer'll make tons of money, so he lets it have airtime. Instantaneously, Ivan becomes a star and a Robin Hood-esque hero to the supposedly oppressed people of Jamaica. Well, Robin Hood isn't the best example - he's much more O.J.-esque; is there anyone in the world who won't immediately conjure up the image of a white Bronco during a scene in which a dozen people cheer Ivan on when he's blasting away at a rival ganja dealer? This is really dispicable, and it becomes even moreso when, during Ivan's final stand-off, the director, Brecht-style, cuts to the movie's Jamaican audience clapping and laughing as he kills a couple of more police officers. 6/10.
Review of The Harder They Come
