Middleman

Well, I've finally tracked down Wesley Snipes's worst film and it turns out to be this Mario Van Peebles-directed stinker that attempts to mix the small-time gangster genre with a serial killer flick. HARD LUCK is an appallingly shot, badly written B-movie that's so inept that you wonder whether Peebles went out of his way to make the worst film he could as part of a bet.

The film stars Snipes and the often-naked Jackie Quinones as an ex-con and a stripper who go on the run from the Mob with a suitcase full of cash. All very ordinary you might think, but then the plot takes a turn for the bizarre with the introduction of a serial killing couple played by Cybill Shepherd and James Liao. Yes, that really is Cybill Shepherd in this movie, although what she's doing here I can only guess.

HARD LUCK is shoddily made and particularly badly shot; all of the dialogue scenes and moments of exposition are acceptable, but the handling of the action is horrendous (a surprise considering Peebles's experience in the genre). The ineptness has to be seen to be believed: there's genuinely nothing good here, aside from a typically reliable Snipes, so how this got made or even released I have no idea.

This is a weird movie. It starts of as a gangster movie with drugs, naked girls and suits that you get arrested for just by wearing them.

The movie is split up into two different movies, the first a gangster/love/action/pulp-fiction-story and the second part a horror/psycho/thriller type of story. It sounds good on paper, and the director and editor are both doing their best to keep the two stories together. To bad it's not working, the stories are to different and it really feels like if someone took two movies and created a mix-tape from them.

The action is average and Wesley Snipes is doing his thing, but not more then you could expect from a B-type actor. Some of the other cast members are doing a real good job and this only makes Snipes look more like a poster name then a real actor in this case.

The biggest problem I had with this movie is that the psycho/killer part appealed more to me then the main gangesterstory. Every time the story shifted to the Thriller part I woke up from the "almost-sleeping-state" the gangster part put me in.

To sum it all up: OK movie the fact that it's very different from Wesley Snipes' other work, and that the writing is above average makes it interesting to watch.

Wesley Snipes stars as a con-man gone legit (You know the type) who is involved in one more deal, done as a favor to a friend, however that deal goes awry and Snipes ends up with the money and then runs into backwoods serial killers led by Cybil Shepherd. I must admit I give Hard Luck points for trying, this movie is so chaotic, haphazard and so over the map that it becomes enjoyable on a surreal level. The fact that I expected a typical ' Former thief ends up with cash finds himself running from the mobsters who set him up' style movie but in the hands of Mario Van Peebles, so much is thrown at the wall and the completely different plot lines are thrown together with so much disregard toward the main plot that Hard Luck become inadvertently entertaining. Also helping factors is that this wasn't made in Romania and Snipes seems more into things. As does Shepherd who delivers a credible performance as the former model turned serial killer. Sure the main story is underwritten and Van Peebles doesn't make a fully coherent story out of the scenarios he intersects, but make of this what you will, Hard Luck is the best film from Wesley Snipes since Blade II.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

Hard Luck is a dark comedy about a pair of serial killers that meet up with a dancer and a guy named lucky who fell into some money. Lucky tries to get the money and skip town with mobsters hot on his trail and picks up a dancer who gets in the way more than once. When Lucky meets up with the serial killers, he almost buys the farm. Pretty good action and dialog that is helped by good actors. Lots of purple comes through and livens up the action. Not meant to be an intellectual film, it has its moments. I think I liked Snipes better in US Marshals type movies. Van Peebles has made a movie that really relied on Snipes to create the draw. What are friends for anyway…. If you like action, some sick serial killers, and some T&A you'll like this movie.

Continuity, was a bit lacking, as the movie opens the obligatory car chase is going on, and our hero is being chastised, by the love interest, in English, yet later in the film as this scene is expanded he is being screamed at in Spanish!

I was left feeling that the story could have done more with the "Serial Killer" duo, I liked the humor of the Diner scene when a Halloween costumed kid comes up and says "Yahhh! I'm a Serial Killer!" & Cybill Shepherd comes back with "Well, I'm a Serial Killer, too!!!" All the cops and robbers, and bad boy trying to go straight has been done to death, and as for getting a pole dancer to strip, so that she "won't run into the street, naked"... Really!!! There are interesting characters like the Gay XXX movie producer "Latinos are the NEW Exotic" Cass the Serial Killer "Imagine the worst thing that can happen to you, and I will show you how limited your imagination really is". Could have been a 'good' movie...