Love the Hard Way

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.

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.

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.

Adrien Brody, will you marry me?

Proposals aside, once again, Brody proves why he deserved his Oscar (and that kiss from Halle Berry). He gives a beautiful, touching performance here as a charming, rakish, snakeskin-jacket-wearing con artist who falls in love with a girl from the right side of the tracks. Jack Grace is no ordinary sleazeball, though. He keeps a secret storage unit seperate from the apartment he shares with his partner-in-crime Charlie (Jon Seda), where he keeps first editions of classic novels (he has a penchant for Melville) and works on his own novel. In other words, he's exactly the kind of bad boy that would attract intellectual Claire (Charlotte Ayanna), a beautiful, unstable biology major at Columbia. Claire tells him she likes movies best that make her cry, and he does his best to oblige her, ultimately sending her on a self-destructive bender that makes him look like a good boy.

Brody carries this film, and the lovely Charlotte Ayanna is unfortunately not given nearly as much to work with. She spends most of her time alternating between trying to change him (we all know how well that works), and having hysterics, and then finally goes on to attempt to prove that she can exist in his world and take the kinds of risks that he gets off on. The romance between the two is not well-developed at the beginning, either, so though we see plenty in him that makes us believe she loves him, we don't see what has gone on between them. Brody, however, makes up the slack in the script with every shot of his wonderfully expressive eyes. He is the walking, talking answer to the question, "Why do good girls like bad boys?"

Unfortunately, this film only had a limited engagement at the Starz Film Center, and as far as I know, does not have any wider distribution. This is a shame, particularly after Brody's Oscar win this year, and I hope that this will change and that more people will get to see this movie and see one of the most talented actors of his generation in action.

This well-acted, twisted, bittersweet story was a pleasant surprise. After admiring Adrien Brody's haunted portrayal of the pianist trapped in Nazi Germany, I wondered if he could really be that good of an actor, maybe it was just the genius of Polanski's direction. This role proved his talent is real for me. It is a contemporary tale about a hustler who secretly longs to be an author who becomes attracted to a comely coed who is studying to become a scientist. They couldn't be more different, yet they form a connection that changes their lives forever. The actress who plays Claire has beautiful sky-blue eyes and a nubile body as brilliant as her mind. Jack is not prepared for a woman like her. His friends are his partners in crime but he is the boss, he has all the answers, until he meets his match in a vice detective played by the always great Pam Grier. What will the future hold for him? Rent this movie and see. You won't be sorry.