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04/23/2004: "Film review: The Hard Word."

The Hard Word (HW) is an Australain thriller/heist movie. Some people have said it's a bit like Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. I say it's a bit like being molested by a grandfather clock - slow and unpleasant.

Here's the plot:

Three brothers are forced, by treachery, into a job they are under prepared for. The job goes wrong and all hell breaks loose.


Here's what my friends and I thought it might be like:

BOOM! Australia! Birds called Sheila with black eyes and fake tits. Cocaine and razorblades, suitcases full of cash. Automatic weapons and devious henchmen, car chases and betrayal. Blood on the floor, guts on the ceiling and sharp suits with bullet holes in.

Here's what it was like (in the miserably cold room in which we watched it):

The brothers are shown in talking in jail. Then there's some treacherous people talking. Then other people talking. Repeat for about an hour. Suddenly! A lacklustre heist scene that lasts ten minutes. Then more talking punctuated by preposterous escape scene, more talking and a shitty slow motion ending that stuffed the arse up any stylistic credibility the film had.

If the dialogue and character development had been exceptional, the talking would have be fine. They weren't though. Everything was average. 'Average' is fine when it's short, but when it's strung over one hour and forty minutes, it only becomes shit. (Like this site.)

There weren't even any tits in it.


IMDB.com reviews of the film. One chap liked it because the prison scenes were realistic; he knew this 'cos he'd 'done time Down Under'.