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Is Los Angeles the world capital of palm trees, power lunches and showbiz hype? Is New York a capital of culture loaded with wise guys, ethnic (ill-gotten) riches and the mean, sleazy streets?
In The Hard Way, the moviemakers ram these two cliches together with a tongue-in-cheek vengeance. It’s a buddy-buddy movie in which the two main characters--a nail-hard Manhattan homicide cop (James Woods as John Moss) and a winsomely cute action-movie Hollywood superstar (Michael J. Fox as Nick Lang)--become symbols of their respective cities. In it, New York declares warfare on wimp-ridden L.A. and L.A. wins New York over with charm, guile and movie deals.
Fox’s Lang and Woods’ Moss, thrown together because the actor is researching the cop for an upcoming movie, are the male-bonding equivalents of the Sylvester and Tweetybird. Their relationship is different, instead of being merely stylized, it's fraught with physical peril. Lang gets hurled head-over-heels out a barroom window; Moss goes flying down the street on a tow-truck’s swinging door. In between them are the love interest (Annabella Sciorra, The Sopranos) and the death interest: a grinning serial killer who calls himself the Party Crasher (Stephen Lang, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Avatar).
It’s a big, blowzy, hard-racing, bright movie that comes at you a mile-a minute: hyperactive, packed to the brim, jabbering away like a speed freak. The movie's premise is that movie cops and real-life cops, like L.A. and N.Y., are oil and water--especially when one of them is used to car phones and poolside sushi (then novel) and the other favors a bat on the skull and street vendor hot dogs.
The director, John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Blue Thunder and Nick of Time), knows how to handle this kind of big, pop entertainment, and he leaves reality behind quite early. He’s dealing less with impressions than with all the L.A.-N.Y. images sprayed onto the screen in two decades of action movies. His Hard Way is like a conventional, overdressed buddy-buddy cop movie, another Lethal Weapon or Running Scared, with the screening-room wisecracks built right into the script. (Lem Dobbs, well known for Blade Runner and Out of Sight, among others, co-wrote this.)
The numerous "inside Hollywood" gags - everything from sequels and promos to Mel Gibson’s rump to Michael J. Fox’s height (the prime running gag in the movie), also point up its main incongruity: the fact that the fantasy land of L.A. seems so much realer than the Manhattan grit. A clever conceit executed flawlessly.
Michael J. Fox as Lang is fleeing into the same sort of movie he’s trying to avoid, the kind with Roman numerals in the title--and the whole movie is a rumination on buddy-buddy scripts. The Party Crasher, who often seems like a frustrated screenwriter, composes all his murders on a computer, and at one point Lang bursts in on Moss and announces he knows what’s about to happen because they’ve just reached the “third act.” The characters even flee into one of Lang’s movies (a Raiders of the Lost Ark parody) and, before the end, they’ve gotten swallowed up in the marketing campaign too: all four of them clambering around a huge three-dimensional billboard with Lang’s face puffing smoke into the Times Square night. Keep in mind that this pre-dated the awful The Last Action Hero by several years.
The Hard Way (rated R) is loud, brash, racy and, on its own shallow terms, very entertaining. Die-hard fans of buddy-cop movies will appreciate the often sarcastic dialogue, the garish over-the-top flamboyance with which Badham and the screenwriters hurl around all the cliches of the genre, from “Hill Street Blues” station-house clutter to the monstrous super-villain. Playing the maniacal Crasher, Stephen Lang has Rutger Hauer’s intensity and Ron Liebman’s wolfish smile; he’s a real scene-chewer.
Some viewers might not dig the unrelenting, unmodulated tempo, the crash-bang cartoon simplifications and the silly way the tag-team of screenwriters drag in Moss’ romance and turn it into a triangle. Trapped between Woods and Fox, Annabella Sciorra’s Susan might as well be walking around wearing a sandwich board emblazoned “Obligatory Girlfriend” on one side and “Humanizing Element” on the other.
But it’s Woods and Fox who are the movie’s core. They’re an interesting duo. Often they seem to be in the middle of an actor’s duel, pushing their roles naturally to the edge of caricature--and their best scene is a male-bonding homoerotic sendup staged in that manliest of manliest Manhattan bar, McSorley’s.
Badham directs the dialogue as if he were trying to remake His Girl Friday or any number of thirties screwball comedies - the actors are constantly stepping on each others lines - adding to the furious pace.
Woods uses his trademark bantering, live-wire intensity to extravagant satiric effect, jamming down hard on every phrase, letting his chin dart around like a skinny Mussolini. Fox counters by continually flickering his eyes around in those hurt, "aw shucks", boyish looks of his, biting his lip, letting eyes brush around the room, plaintively. (Lang/Fox, of course worships the "real McCoy" Woods.)
Standing in for the Big Apple and La La-land, Woods dynamically plays the abrasive cynic to Fox’s comically pretentious, laid-back dilettante. They’re great together.
Also features Delroy Lindo and Luis Guzman.The
Good sound and picture. Option English and Spanish subtitles. No extras.
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Reviews with images
You are Yoda among cops!
A truly fun time...I am a huge fan of the comedy/action genre and I have to say that this nails that genre at every turn. It moves at a good pace and let's the characters come out in a timely fashion. The situation, though far fetched, is still made quite believable by the actors with James Woods as standout as a grizzled cop with one eye on the villain and one eye on the new lady in his life.The supporting cast really says New York with every line spoken and I would go so far as to say that the city itself is a character which is the norm whenever a film is made there. LL Cool J does a credible job and is fun to watch in his first film role. Stephen Lang chews up the scenery as The Party Crasher with his usual mixture of evil and charismatic presence.If ya dig gun-paly, dig Michael J. Fox, dig a good time then throw this in your cart, you won't be disappointed.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2019
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2023
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2019
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2019
A truly fun time...
I am a huge fan of the comedy/action genre and I have to say that this nails that genre at every turn. It moves at a good pace and let's the characters come out in a timely fashion. The situation, though far fetched, is still made quite believable by the actors with James Woods as standout as a grizzled cop with one eye on the villain and one eye on the new lady in his life.
The supporting cast really says New York with every line spoken and I would go so far as to say that the city itself is a character which is the norm whenever a film is made there. LL Cool J does a credible job and is fun to watch in his first film role. Stephen Lang chews up the scenery as The Party Crasher with his usual mixture of evil and charismatic presence.
If ya dig gun-paly, dig Michael J. Fox, dig a good time then throw this in your cart, you won't be disappointed.
I am a huge fan of the comedy/action genre and I have to say that this nails that genre at every turn. It moves at a good pace and let's the characters come out in a timely fashion. The situation, though far fetched, is still made quite believable by the actors with James Woods as standout as a grizzled cop with one eye on the villain and one eye on the new lady in his life.
The supporting cast really says New York with every line spoken and I would go so far as to say that the city itself is a character which is the norm whenever a film is made there. LL Cool J does a credible job and is fun to watch in his first film role. Stephen Lang chews up the scenery as The Party Crasher with his usual mixture of evil and charismatic presence.
If ya dig gun-paly, dig Michael J. Fox, dig a good time then throw this in your cart, you won't be disappointed.
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Top reviews from other countries
Salv
Colegas a la fuerza [BR] Edición UK, con Castellano, Michael J.Fox.
Reviewed in Spain on October 25, 2016
Salv
Reviewed in Spain on October 25, 2016
Vale mucho la pena esta edición, tenía mis dudas si vendría en castellano, pero mirando información por otros lados parecía que si venía, lo pedí y ahí está, gran calidad y más para la época que salió.
Muy recomendable y entretenida como suelen ser las películas de Michael J.Fox.
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