Steineded
How sad is this?
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
joao_mendes7839
Um argumento razoável com uma grande interpretação de Bale.
daniel hauptmann
I've read a short summary of what 'Harsh Times' is about here on IMDb and couple of reviews. After this I had got the feeling that it is going to be like the 'Training day' - how the things on the street are going on, inside look into the gangs etc. I love 'Training day' so I was really looking forward to seeing 'Harsh Times'.***********SPOILERS AHEAD************* Instead of it, I've seen a movie about selling a stolen gun and thinking about a new job. This already says, that there is no actual plot whatsoever. It's just about few days of some people in LA and Mexico.There is nothing much going on at the first hour (except of beginning which was really promising)! The two friends are trying to get high and laid, meeting their uninteresting friends, looking for problems here and there, doing this and that in order to find a new job etc. There are some good tense or funny moments but it is overall boring, it doesn't follow any story and every scene looks random.The film starts to be more interesting after the first hour, when Jim (Bale) gets a new job in Federal Task force in Colombia but then it drops again to the low level of the first hour. The last gripping moment is at the end when Jim gets crazy, gets shot and his friend Mike has to finish him (this scene was actually very good). It means the film has some opportunities - some good scenes - to get attractive, but never make use of them; 'Harsh Times' fails to build something watchable on these sequences, expanding them. Lost potential.***********END OF SPOILERS************* The main characters are difficult to like - as well as the others (Mike's wife, Mike's and Jim's friends ...). I couldn't feel any sympathy to any of them nor could I understand the motives of their actions. The dialog between Jim, Mike and their buddies is irritating, same every time, full of 'Man', 'Bro', 'Dawg', 'Homie...' crap and hand greetings. Problem is that it looks and sounds so forced in 'Harsh Times' and therefore quite unbelievable and embarrassingly. Conclusion: Overall uninteresting except some promising moments, full of missed opportunities, monotonous dialogs (wannabe gangsta), unlikeable characters, no plot = disappointment. And at the top of the things it is incomparable to 'Training Day' - can't figure out why people compare these two movies to each other. Training Day has a great plot, good action, surprising and tense development. Harsh Times lacks it all.
Scott LeBrun
Screenwriter David Ayer ("Training Day") debuts as director with this not uninteresting look at some troubled lives. The fact that the script is autobiographical does give it some impact, and overall the story is potent in the way that it chronicles one mans' downward spiral when it seems that fate is conspiring against him. The main character is based on men that Ayer knew, and while not all that sympathetic, he's a commanding presence, flaws and all. What helps a great deal is the acting by the talented Christian Bale (also one of the executive producers here), who's as incredible as ever completely immersing himself in a role. Well shot and fairly absorbing, the film doesn't have that much resonance when it's over but it would be hard not to feel *something*.Bale plays Jim Davis, a former Army Ranger who was very efficient at brutally dispatching the enemy. When he returns stateside, he drifts back into a life of petty crime, pot smoking, and general aimlessness. He's not totally unambitious, though; he does have aspirations of joining the LAPD. There is a problem, however: he's mentally unbalanced, and tends towards being irresponsible. His best friend Mike (Freddy Rodriguez) isn't much better off, willingly going along with Jim on his escapes despite the fact that he's promised to find employment to help out his girlfriend Sylvia (Eva Longoria).Bale is really the one that makes this a must-see, acting with his customary intensity and sense of commitment. Rodriguez is very good as well, offering a somewhat more rational- minded individual who runs into problems when he insists on being loyal to his friend. The cast of mostly unfamiliar faces does well; J.K. Simmons and Terry Crews are great as always in their small roles, and Tammy Trull is beautiful and appealing as the Mexican woman whom Jim intends to marry. Cinematographer Steve Mason gives this a very slick albeit fairly monochromatic look while Ayer mostly refrains from visual gimmicks until near the end. Graeme Revells' touching score is supplemented by an eclectic soundtrack.Fans of urban crime dramas should find this to be pretty entertaining.Seven out of 10.
rrcharpe
Christian Bale is an actor who has built his career on playing disturbed and dysfunctional characters in the movies he has been in, until of course when he became the heroic caped crusader Batman. Unfortunately this movie from back in 2005 was one of the dysfunctional and disturbed character movies, and even more unfortunately it is centered on a U.S. military veteran who seems to have learned nothing, absolutely nothing by having been a member of the greatest fighting force on the planet. As a combat veteran who served two years in South Vietnam (1967 and 1968) with the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division) of the U.S. Army I was always critical of and resentful of the portrayal in movies of back then that always highlighted the aberrational combat veteran who came back to the United States and did great misdeeds. This movie follows in that sick tradition of cutting down the U.S. Military by showing combat veterans in the worst light. This movie sucks, the portrayal of Middle East conflict war veterans sucks and I give this movie an almost negative 1 because this soldier (as portrayed by Bale) did not learn discipline in the service and had no respect for others, which is what the U.S. Military teaches. Remember this folks, we are the good guys. We are the ones who have saved the world. But of course Hollywood doesn't want to highlight how good we are and were, because that would be politically incorrect in this Obama world we live in. Don't bother with this pure piece of Hollywood junk! StocktonRob
