Love the Hard Way

This is a must for every Adrien Brody fan out there. Despite the dismal reviews this little known movie received, this movie is a true gem. Set in New York, Adrien plays Jack, a streetsmart con man who with his partner,Charlie, played by John Seda, rip off foreign businessman. Their actress friends pretend to be hookers, and seduce the businessmen, then Jack and Charlie break in dressed as policemen and make a fake arrest. In private, Jack is hard at work writing a novel, and frequently visits a run down movie theater where he meets Claire, played by Charlotte Ayanna. Claire is a "good girl" graduate student who eagerly ignores warnings not to date Jack. Jack is drawn to her innocence, while she is drawn to his charms and cleverness. Their first date begins with a pleasent little dinner and ends with a night of steamy sex in Jack's bed. From here the relationship becomes doomed. As the police slowly close in on Jack and Charlie, Jack does everything possible to end the relationship with Claire, it is at this point that they both begin to self-distruct. Their self-distruction leads them down a path that becomes a serious dose of reality for Claire and Jack. It's a story of love, jealousy, sex, betrayal, crime, suicide, it's a realistic love story and a lesson of everything that should not happen in a relationship.

Adrien Brody is outstanding in this one, and Charlotte Ayanna is also good. This is truely one of Adrien's best.

I'll believe that someone can get bit by a special poisonous spider and gain super powers before I'll believe that someone that looks like Charlotte Ayanna (and supposedly is a science student) would have ANYTHING to do with someone who looks and acts like Brody's character or would start to turn tricks for less than $10,000 per night. The acting is OK, and it is shot well, but the premise is a bit far-fetched. Brody isn't physically imposing enough to carry the role, and Ayanna is FAR too good looking. She would be at Columbia a month before she hooked up with the NYC jet set and, as for him...I mean...who does he intimidate acting like a thug? He's about 140 pounds soaking wet holding a brick...looks convincing as a starving war refugee, not as a tough-guy. Would have been better if Seda and Brody had switched roles. Pam Grier seems to just be going through the motions. The story is interesting, aside from the miscasting, but thoroughly unbelievable. Rent Mean Streets or Pope of Greenwich Village if you want a slice of the New York underworld that's a bit more palatable and easier to stomach.

Wow I cannot believe there is only one other comment for this movie. I have to agree about this movie staying with you. For almost two hours I was completely involved with two people I will never really know, yet for some reason it has changed me in some strange way. I watched the movie and like the others in the theater had the same rollercoster ride of feelings, but it was not until after I left the theater that I had an abundance of emotions come over me. The acting was amazing all the way around, story was an A+. I work hard for the money I make and for the high price I paid for admission, it was all worth it for this great creative process! I suggest that everyone support their local small theater when this film comes around to your town!!

Absorbing enough drama of doomed love that fails to provides its two protagonists with any kind of emotional consistency, and too often leaves us wondering just why they do the things they do. Brody plays a small-time hustler who's secretly writing a novel in a storage container while Ayanna is the straight-A biology student who falls under his improbable spell. A better writer might have had us believing, but not writer/director Peter Sehr.

Pam Grier steals this film and she's only on screen for five minutes total. She's a whole lot of woman! Just kidding. I liked Love the Hard Way. Here is an attempt at a modern romantic myth, namely the American Virgin. Sure men want their love chick to be pure, to raise sons and daughters that are yours and yours alone, but Adrien Brody is a young thief in a porno world he did not make. After all, he's slept with 200 women. So in between hotel sleaze capers, he beds innocent Columbia biology genius with the big chest, Charlotte Avanna, and our Lothario gets more than he bargained for as his virgin becomes promiscuous in the cause of thievery. Naturally, our hero is stunned, angry, and confused.

Charlottes' revenge or strategy to get her man is pretty far fetched, but the director has created an atmosphere of slimy New York thieves on the make with a rap film score and big Cadillac's squealing tires amidst the riff raff, so we sort of believe the unbelievable. It's a nice try in the same vein as Tarentino's script, True Romance, but LTHW is grittier.