Harsh Times [HD DVD] dvd movie.|
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List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $19.95 You Save: $10 Features • Widescreen In Theaters : 10 November, 2006 DVD Release : 12 June, 2007 |
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Harsh Times [HD DVD] description Bleak as its South Central Los Angeles setting, Harsh Times is like a suicidal vortex swallowing men who ought to know better but can't stop their self-destruction. Christian Bale stars as Jim Davis, a stressed-out, former Army Ranger who becomes a very bad influence on his weak-willed buddy, Mike Alvarez (Freddy Rodriguez of Six Feet Under). Together the two meander through streets at night, getting drunk and stoned, finding trouble for its own sake and inviting danger as a ritual of machismo bonding. Mike's wife, Sylvia (Eva Longoria), a lawyer whom Mike, working as a telemarketer, put through school, is repelled by Jim and watches in pain as her spouse chooses a downward spiral over renewal and redemption with her. When Jim's application to join the L.A. police is turned down, he leads Mike into pure anarchy. An impractical change of fortune doesn't help any, and first-time director David Ayer, who wrote the screenplay for Harsh Times years before his script for Training Day, goes to some lengths, dramatically and visually, to convey Jim's unhinged condition. The dreariness of it all, and a sense that Bale has constructed--but not exactly lived in--another in his gallery of lost, misfit souls, makes it hard to connect with this film. Still, it is hard to turn away from these desperate and dangerous characters. --Tom Keogh |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Three-star movie, four-star Bale |
| The movie itself is OK, pretty good, nothing really special. It's Christian Bale's performance that makes it rock out. As a south central Los Angeles streetwise white guy, it's astonishing to hear this Brit nail the speech mannerisms and character of what fundamentally amounts to a crazed loser who doesn't know a good thing when he sees it.
Still having nightmares about his experience in the Gulf War as a soldier, Jim Davis (Bale) gets rejected by the LAPD for a job, but also gets contacted by Homeland Security--they're interested in him as a candidate. With a girlfriend in Mexico and his best friend a Mexican-American Angeleno (Freddy Rodriguez as Mike), Davis goes cruising with Mike through the mean streets of the city, basically looking for trouble. Davis is fluent in Spanish--another reason Homeland Security is interested in him (you'll see what I mean when you see the movie). And they find it. Murder figures largely in this movie--one of the murders is really shocking--as well as humiliation, deception, and truly crazed behavior. Eva Longoria turns in a solid performance as a somewhat believable girlfriend of Mike who's now a lawyer, but still "addicted" to street language when he provokes her into it based on devious behavior. And old reliable J.K. Simmons is fine in a small role as a Homeland Security agent who knows Davis is a man with trouble embedded deep inside him. As one of the producers of the movie, Bale obviously had more at stake here than just his role as an actor, but he really does "tear up the screen" as the DVD cover blurb states. Directed by David Ayer, who also wrote the screenplay for Training Day--a similar movie in which Denzel Washington proved he could be as great a bad guy on screen as he could a good guy--Harsh Times has the same close juxtaposition of good and evil in a dangerous environment. Davis' Mexican girlfriend, Marta, really loves him a lot--so much so that even when he starts truly flipping out on her, she still tells him she is madly in love with him. But Davis is too far gone... See this for Bale's performance; it'll knock your socks off. |
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