Hard Men

I saw this again on TV tonight for maybe the third or fourth time, and certainly not the last. There is much to like about this little gem, but those looking for a Tarantino-esque experience (because that's all they seem to know), have been disappointed.

These negative reviewers have obviously had a sense of humour bypass, and ought to look up the word "irony" in the dictionary. Comparisons to Tarantino are facile and irrelevant, that world has nothing to do with this.

Another reviewer compared them to the Three Stooges, as if that's a BAD THING!? Although it's certainly more appropriate - three very different yet complimentary characters prone to sudden bursts of comedy violence, I found myself quite liking these guys, as opposed to the non-characters in so many movies where it's difficult to care who lives or dies.

A note on the acting - first-rate, as anyone would realise if they had seen their other work, especially Lee Ross. (The exception of course is Mad Frankie Fraser who plays himself as usual).

Doesn't take itself too seriously - 8/10

A firecracker of a film, except that it was exposed to dampness for too long and fails to ignite. The premise is appealing enough: a 3-man gang of East London thugs do the business for the guvnor, one "sees the light" and wants out, the others get the order to eradicate him for whatever reasons. Tension, action, exploration of a conscience-troubled character would all seem to be laid out against the backbone of the plot to make for riveting viewing. However, what we get is a clumsy, crude, badly reworked mish-mash of other films, mainly plagiarising the Quentin chap. The jokes are frankly not funny and the dialogue so depressingly unimaginative. Bad language may add to authenticity, but (unless you write like Roddy Doyle) is not the key to belly laughs. "Hard Men" wavers between wanting to be uncompromising in its violence and wanting to please all by brightening things with colourful characters. Violent it certainly is, but the attempts at humour derail the carriage, leaving the viewer with a feeling of disappointment at what could have been, given tighter scripting, better actors, an engaging score and greater focus. "Lock, Stock ..." is a long way ahead of this in all stakes.

Back in the Fifties, many a movie seemed to require one or other of its characters to say: 'hey, let's put on a show!'. In what may have passed for the gestation of this film, someone, perhaps the writer / director, said: 'Hey, let's make a movie!' The result now is much the same as the result way back then, except that in those Fifties disasters the people on each side of the camera had a reasonable idea of what they were doing. No such luck here: if I'd had to sit through this as a graduation piece from young film makers, the most charitable verdict would've been that 'Hard Men' is to movie making what Jeffrey Archer is to English Literature. In other words, no connection.

The movie doesn't so much take to the screen as set up house in a cliche -- guns, shouting, more guns, more shouting, bad language, guns, bad language, guns. As reportage it's dismal. As fiction it's unsustainable. The acting is of a standard to make one wish to hand out Oscars to those responsible for 'Night of the Lepus' ('Attack of The Killer Rabbits') and the direction as consistent as a weathervane in a hurricane.

But that ol' Fifties magic lingers on, for a third of the way through the director finally loses the plot altogether and it's time for 'hey, let's put on a show!' -- whereupon one or other of the mass murderers turns to the camera and sings about his newborn baby.

Come back, Ed Wood. All is forgiven.

Rating: unrateable.

Tone, Bear and John are three hard men in the employee of London underworld boss Pops Den. They are collectors of money, threateners of people and removers of competition. However, with the birth of his first child, Tone decides that he has had enough and that he needs to turn his life around, starting with getting out of the life. When Bear tells Pops this, he orders them to kill Tone and bring him his severed hand by nine o'clock the next morning.

It is to be expected that, when one genre suddenly spawns a bit film, that many others will jump on the bandwagon - some being good and some being rubbish. We saw it with Scream when it relaunched the teen horror genre and spawned a tonne of copies. So it was no surprise to anyone (even if it was still depressing) that the success of a few British cockney gangster films with dark comedy spawned a raft of copies - most of which were average at best and ended up flopping.

Hard Men is one of these films and it deserved every penny it failed to get at the box office. The plot is almost none existent and centres on one night in the lives of these three. It would better if the events in the lives of the characters had mattered or been engaging but, because they aren't, then the plot just falls to pieces (not that it was ever really together). Instead it seems to revel in the grim of it's characters - but doesn't have the decency to make them people. One scene sees a prostitute talk about her years of abuse, but even that is just a scene to add shock value rather than depth. The film even has the nerve to look back fondly to the days of `civilised' gangsters (giving a cameo to Frankie Fraser for that reason) as if all the violence on display here is in some way admirable or a curiosity.

The cast are roundly bad but it is not really their fault - they simply have no material to work with. The cameo for a violent criminal is just pure bad taste and adds nothing to the film. As director and writer Amalou seems to have just fluked his way into the job on the basis of seeing better films and ripping them off. Certainly he brings no wit or style to his script even if his direction is actually quite good considering the budget he had to work with.

Overall this is a very poor film that will only appeal to fans of the genre - all others need to avoid it. I was surprised by just how rough I found the whole thing was - it lacked originality, revelled in uninvolving and seemed under the impression that the word `f*ck' is the height of clever writing.

I watched this film expecting it to be bad. The title was off putting and I reluctantly let my friend hire it from the video shop.

I have to say, I loved it. For me, Hard Men isn't trying to be like a Tarantino film. It has a dreamlike quality and has the feel of a Sci Fi black comedy rather than a gangster film. The world in this film is definitely not this world.

If you liked Clockwork Orange, Gangster number one, Fight club, Resurrection man, or Twin town, then watch this because you'll either love it or hate it