La Manière forte

Great banter filled with the excellent angry James Woods as the main cop along side Micheal J. Fox as the inspired actor within actor lol I know how silly that sounds but this a pure fun popcorn flick. Neal Badham is a terrific director & Stephen Lang was great as the Party crasher; all around awesome movie!

There's something different about "The Hard Way", something in its approach to a well-worn genre. Buddy cop movies were all over the place back then, and here's another one to throw on the pile. But having a pampered actor hang around a disgruntled cop offers an opportunity for Hollywood satire, which freshens up the mismatched partners angle. James Woods tends to be hit-or-miss for me, but he's ideal in such a hothead role. And wired Michael J. Fox provides a great foil. The whole thing works; the script's focused, the action's energetic and it always has that meta feel to it.

7/10

Wildly violent, but hilarious comedy about a showboat-like Hollywood action star (Michael J. Fox) who in order to prepare for his next film, comes to the Big Apple and tags along with a hard-boiled police detective (James Woods) who is desperately determined to nab a notorious killer dubbed "The Party Crasher" (Stephen Lang) despite nearly getting himself killed in the process. Fox and Woods certainly make an interesting comedy team. There's no way that this movie could without the presence of a seriously funny actor like Woods to be included in the film. The film has a few great moments including one where the Woods character impolitely asks the captain (Delroy Lindo) to get the Fox character off his back and the film's climax is exciting and makes a great reference to "North by Northwest". It's the "The Odd Couple" meets "Dirty Harry" head-on.

Entertaining mix of action and comedy, at least for the first two-thirds of its length. Then there are some rather overextended action sequences and the film loses some of its comic edge. Still, the acting is first-rate all around, with Fox and Woods offering many laughs when the script gives them the chance, and Stephen Lang a highly enjoyable, totally loony villain. (**1/2)

The Hard Way is a great action comedy, but totally underrated. In this film Michael J. Fox plays an action actor Nick Lang, who wants in his next film play the New York cop John Moss, played by James Woods.So Nick spends some time with Moss, like lives in the same apartment with him.Moss doesn't like this at all, he's not such a big fan of Lang.And then there is also a bad guy, played by Stephen Lang.So there are two problems that Moss has to get rid of.And John has a girlfriend Susan, who is played by Annabella Sciorra.And John's having some problems with her too.But everything turns out fine with Moss, Lang and Susan, but not so fine with the crook. This was a great film with great actors.Michael J. Fox was great as usual and it was nice to see James Woods in a comedy.It would be nice to see a sequel for this, but the movie wasn't so successful as it should have been, so maybe not then.