Harsh Times (DVD)

.../> I wanted to see Harsh Times for a while now, and awaited the DVD’s arrival with some anticipation. Like so many things the build up really was not worth the case; this at times annoyingly laboured movie has peaks and troughs, and this is not helped by an actor I have a great amount of respect for.

Christian Bale plays Jim and this is a ludicrous piece of casting if ever I have seen one. Getting an English actor to play an American ...
...the story.

Harsh Times is quite a gritty film, lots of scenes of drug taking, violence and generally erratic behaviour might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The fact that the movie flips aggressive impulses 180 degrees at the drop of the hat also means that the movie can become a little repetitive.

Special Features:

• 'Making of' featurette – This to me actually was more interesting than the movie. It creates ... more

Jim Luther Davis is an unusual 26 year old man honourably discharged from the Army (allegedly), Jim feels the need to become a policeman. However from a psychiatric point of view this is not a viable career move.

Mike Alonzo is a unemployed man, he lives with his attorney lover Sylvia; who spends her days nagging him to find work. Mike rather than finding work spends his days driving round the streets of South Central LA with Jim.

The two men drink and drive, and smoke some weed. When things get tough they might need to illustrate their authority with a show of force. Just at the moment things get out of control, Jim receives a phone call from the FBI who would love to work with him providing he can pass some tests. But Jim’s behaviour is becoming more and more unusual, and violent assaults seem to become the order of the day.

I wanted to see Harsh Times for a while now, and awaited the DVD’s arrival with some anticipation. Like so many things the build up really was not worth the case; this at times annoyingly laboured movie has peaks and troughs, and this is not helped by an actor I have a great amount of respect for.

Christian Bale plays Jim and this is a ludicrous piece of casting if ever I have seen one. Getting an English actor to play an American one is a trial enough, but then getting him to adopt some ghetto lingo as he changes his tone an accent from Black American, to Hispanic just takes this beyond the realms of believability. While Bale has the correct mode and behaviour to admirably play the psychopath as he brazenly reinvents the role he played in American Psycho, the accents aspect ruins his performance, and this really gets to you more and more as the movie progresses.

Another annoying element is that you can’t really understand Jim’s mindset. On one hand he is an incredibly loving and caring man who wants to settle down with his Mexican girlfriend Marta; on the other hand he is chasing some impossible and obviously delusional dream, where a key element to his personality is that he must be a psycho. The two different aspects to Jim become confusing and at times annoying as it seems that often there is no way to identify which face Jim will wear.

Mike on the other hand played by Freddy Rodriguez is a genuine Hispanic actor whom is the more level headed of the two. You know who he is and what his motives are ironically while Jim speaks perfect Mexican, Mike cannot speak a word. Rodriguez character is the one that as a viewer you bond with more or less instantly. His girlfriend Sylvia played by Desperate Housewives actress Eva Longoria turns out a great performance that many a nagged man will see something familiar in. Eva’s performance is far more realistic than her role in Housewives, a little more subtle.

The story itself has some confusing (to me at least) aspects that I’m still a bit in the dark over. As the movie starts a raid is taking place on a potential terrorist encampment in Iraq, this is a flashback to when Jim was in the Army. I cant quite understand if the message was that Jim sat back and pretended to be involved while the others massacred the terrorists, or whether this is a statement about Jim’s mind and a possible indication of why Jim in the present is the way he is.

Death and trouble seem to occur all around Jim and Mike, but there is little indication of these events having any medium to long term affects on the characters. Situations that could easily end up with the two men’s lives coming to an end seem hollow and emotionless; I guess you could say a bit of a laugh.

The story drags along at times at a snails pace, and it’s easy to get sidetracked by more interesting things like the quantity of raindrops on your window. Or what colour you might bleach your hair to make “a statement”. To me a statement is far from the heart of this movie, and in my mind it at times is often a load of old nothing; pointless plot devises thrown in just make the movies runtime longer, but add no basis to the story.

Harsh Times is quite a gritty film, lots of scenes of drug taking, violence and generally erratic behaviour might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The fact that the movie flips aggressive impulses 180 degrees at the drop of the hat also means that the movie can become a little repetitive.

Special Features:

• 'Making of' featurette – This to me actually was more interesting than the movie. It creates the film of the movie in a much condensed form as well as reviews some of the actors methods to get into “a mood” and some interesting film production tips.

• Stills gallery – That oh so pointless additional extra tagged onto a DVD where you can look at images from a movie. Having scene the movie could someone tell me why you would want to view stills from it?

Harsh Times is available from Amazon and play for around £10. My best advice to you a potential viewer is to rent rather than buy. 

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