Hard Cash

With a cast including Christian Slater and Val Kilmer, you might expect this to be a humdinger of a caper, but unfortunately, that isn't the case. The script was poorly written and the director seemed unable to decide how serious to take it all...the actors mostly floundered about without a clue. As a fan of both actors, I was most disappointed with this effort.

One of the most senseless, poorly executed and forgettable pieces of trash I have seen this century. Even though Val Kilmer and Christian Slater have done their fare share of clinkers, they've generally been in more good than bad films, so I have no idea how much money or other leverage was used to make them both sign on to this shoddy bit of an action-crime dramedy.

The camera work is not bad though, with very passable and sometimes quite colorful cinematography (you've never seen life as New Jersey trailer trash look so pretty). But the plot is completely unbelieveable and ridiculously executed with downright embarassing scripting, dialogue, editing and pacing.

As for character development, the only person I had any sympathy for was a cameo: Jose, the poor Mexican wetback who had a halfway funny scene selling oranges about mid-way through the film. I never felt sorry for Slater's character and his threatened daughter, the main protangonist and innocent of the film, because the plot was so completely wonky with unbelievable twists. I could of personally improved this picture 200% with about 10 pages of very doable suggestions, scene reorderings, dialogue changes and other cosmetics.

Do what the director and producers should of done with this thing before it was ever released or put to video, and run for the incinerator and burn it!

Val and Christian, shame on you for lending your names to this thing!!

This is one of the worst films that I have ever watched. I rented it because I had faith in Slater and Kilmer - I was disappointed. The plot started out ok but quickly went sour. Same with the acting. The funniest part was the boating sequence. Ever watch a movie where people are in a car and the make-believe background is whipping around behind them in the rear window while they make stupid movements behind the wheel ? Picture it in a boat. Save your money, save your time. Ignore this movie.

It was really bad. I was so disappointed! It has Christian Slater and Balthazar Getty, two of my most favorite actors, and I was really excited to see this, I thought it was be cool, it wasn't. I tried to convince myself that it was good because of the actors in it, but alas, there was not too much that was good about it. I saw it on USA and not on HBO or whatever it was on, so I think that all the massive editing of the film probably wrecked it even more. There was a lot of swearing edited out and its not at all realistic for a bank robber about to arrested to say "lets get the freak outta here!" So... I think the movie was probably a littel better viewed unedited, but I don't know how much that helped. I wanted to like it but it was pretty worthless. Daryl Hannah is the worst actress ever... how she ever gets cast in anything, I will never know. So I wouldn't bother with this movie, if you like the actors in it(Slater, Getty or Kilmer) rent another one of their movies, cause this one sucks.

Hard cash or Run for the Money which i believe was the USA title, is basically another one last heist movie. Christian Slater is the leader of his crew and after being busted for a botched robbery is released from prison looking to make one last score. He encounters problems when the money that is ripped off is FBI money and is then coerced by bad FBI agent Cornell played by Val KIlmer to pull one more heist job for him. The movie is pretty predictable, the action scenes are basically low budget and painfully fake when it comes to the actor's scenes and the script was pretty average. It's dissapointing that a cast with Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, Darryl Hannah, and Bookeem Woodbine ended up in such a dissapointing movie, with that cast and a decent movie this is easily box office, but when you see it you see why it was a tv movie that would've been straight video.