Review of The Harder They Come

I saw this movie in the theater, shortly after its release. This is still a good movie with a great seminal reggae soundtrack, but the original revolutionary message of the movie has been hacked out and distorted, and the hero has been turned into an unsympathetic criminal. Scenes are missing and some altered, and the feeling of the film has gone from Robin Hood (protector of the poor and driven to violence by severe oppression) to Bonnie and Clyde (natural born criminals with no regard for human life). It has also been sanitized of some drug-positive content (note that there is a religious sanctity to marijuana in Jamaica, and this alteration is therefore especially offensive - how would you feel if a movie tangentially about Catholicism substituted milk for wine in the Eucharist, or refused to show the ritual at all?).

I am appalled.