Review of Love the Hard Way

LOVE THE HARD WAY (LtHW) and NOTHING TO LOSE would be an appropriate Adrien Brody double-feature because both had me muttering `Dumbass!' every time the protagonists acted like jerks. 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 cute despite the "cool" touches, which at least help make the film watchable, as does LtHW's striking use of NYC locations like The 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, 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? 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* its audience for long. The DVD cover 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! :-)