Love the Hard Way (2001) Reviews

• sigh...

  gunstreetgrrrl2003-08-01

  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.

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• WOW

  Utoepeea2003-06-19

  Wow I cannot believe there is only one other comment for this movie. I have to agree about this movie staying with you. For almost two hours I was completely involved with two people I will never really know, yet for some reason it has changed me in some strange way. I watched the movie and like the others in the theater had the same rollercoster ride of feelings, but it was not until after I left the theater that I had an abundance of emotions come over me. The acting was amazing all the way around, story was an A+. I work hard for the money I make and for the high price I paid for admission, it was all worth it for this great creative process! I suggest that everyone support their local small theater when this film comes around to your town!!

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• Love Hurts

  styx0r2005-08-08

  This movie is not a high dollar production. It doesn't need to be. This movie is emotional, intellectual, heart-wrenching and sadly beautiful. I experienced a similar overall feeling from watching "Gia" - a movie about supermodels and the pitfalls of modeling (That happens to be Angelina Jolie's best film - unlike her others, and worth watching.) What Love the Hard Way has, that other films don't, are characters who you really connect with. Not because you share things in common with them, but because they are multi-faceted beings with enough background story to deeply invest the viewer in their fate. This review/comment isn't going like I had planned. I think the IMDb rating of this film is far too low, and I think those people who gave it a low score were either not paying attention, or not allowing themselves to do so. Which isn't surprising, because this film is hard to watch at times. Not because it's dull or poorly constructed, but because you don't want to feel the pain. Watch it. The Ying and Yang are in full blossom here.

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• A Beautifully Realistic Love Story

  Hemily2004-05-11

  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.

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• Preposterous

  pinmonk-it2006-02-04

  I'm not going to finish watching this movie. I just can't buy much of anything about this movie. Everything from the lead actresses fake breasts to the improbable con jobs they run is just completely, literally unbelievable in any sense. Brody doesn't seem like a criminal - definitely not a rough, intimidating one - and it is difficult to see what about him would lure the girl out of her college world. It's even more difficult to see how she could go from someone who is sweet, sharp-witted, and presumably of near-genius IQ given her position in school, to someone suicidally stupid enough to serially risk getting murdered or contracting AIDS... especially since this transformation seemed to happen all in the one scene where she sees what she must have suspected was happening anyway: Brody in bed with another girl. I could go on picking it apart, but it isn't worth the time. Movies like this really aggravate me because it is obvious that a lot of talented people were involved, but the writers/producers have produced little more than a stylish insult to human intelligence. I get the feeling that what we are dealing with here is people coming from a cushy film-geek background aspiring to be hipsters, as opposed to people with something to say and/or a basis in real experience.

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