Review: Harsh Times (2005)
Remember the first hour of the Denzel Washington thriller “Training Day”? Allow me to refresh your memory, it was funny, scary, and, especially for a studio film, disarmingly ambigious. Is play-by-his-own-(Hollywood)-set-of-rules veteran cop leading naive rookie (Ethan Hawke) to Hell, or simply showing him the only power plays that living and working in the batteground known as contemporary L.A. allowes? It turns out that we’re going to Hell (or are we already there?) and that Washington is the devil, and at about this point, director Antoine Fuqua pumps “Training Day” up with a bunch of over the top stylistics and Washington’s performance, at this point one of his best, appears to turn into a contempo version of the simmering demon fury of Pacino in “Scarface.” The more “intense” it got, the more I felt like I had been baited and switched.
“Training Day” was written by David Ayer, and he has written and directed “Harsh Times”, another seamy side of L.A. story. “Harsh Times” is about Jim (Christian Bale) and Mike (Freddy Rodriguez) two upper twenties guys torn between the lure of the rough life: selling guns, stealing drugs, screwing whomever they please, and the more conventional, acceptable life, they both have long term relationships with whom they struggle to stay good for, and jobs with benefits and taxable, above the table paychecks. Jim is a veteran of the Iraq war, and was honorably discharged for reasons that remain vague, but we know it still haunts him, and spurs him. Jim continually needs to create scenarios of equal danger for himself here in his homeland, and Mike knows he can only get away with it for so long, before he, or both of them, are killed.
So yes, Ayer has written his “Mean Streets”, about the strain one’s insanity places on a lifelong friendship. But, unlike Training Day, Ayer doesn’t let a lot of plot or structure get in his way, and this is all for the better. “Harsh Times” is exhilaratingly free form, depending entirely on the character’s whims, and the wide (and interesting) gallery of low lifes they encounter. Ayer has a gift with obscene dialogue that seems to bubble up on the spot, to reinforce and check machismo, ego, and id. As a diretor, Ayer doesn’t usually make the newbie mistake of showing off, punching up the material, to land a job directing Bad Boys III.
Christian Bale, probably needs to sell out and do a romantic comedy with Kate Hudson soon, because I’m not sure how long he can keep up this kind of pace, playing these kind of psychos (I’m counting Batman). That said, I’m tempted to call “Harsh Times” his best performance yet. Bale is extremely gifted, but I sometimes sense an actorly self-congratulation in him. Not so here. Jim is part DeNiro’s Johnny Boy from Mean Streets, but he’s smarter and more calculating than Johnny Boy (who really was pure id), and that makes him, of course, more dangerous. Jim is trying to get on with the Feds (the opening of the film sees him rejected from the LAPD) and their obliviousness (actually its closer to apathy) lends the film a sly commentary without resorting to “the state of things” pedantry. Bale’s performance is an authentic live wire, you honestly, and thrillingly, don’t know what he’s going to do next, wave a gun, or kiss you goodbye. The Jim role doesn’t play like a screenwriterly “troubled guy” and Bale doesn’t forget to clue you into Jim’s likeablity and the casual sexiness he can turn on like a switch.
Freddy Rodriguez is the good friend, and that’s always a little thankless, but he doesn’t have the burden of being the film’s conscience like Harvey Keitel did in “Mean Streets”. Mike is truly Jim’s co-conspirator, and they are both creatures of instinct, devoid of Scorsese’s obessive Catholic instrospection. Ayer is more interested in capturing a casual, amoral vibe, a beesnest of thug life that recalls the work of novelist George Pelecanos. Rodriguez proved in the otherwise skippable “Havoc” that he can find the devious tunes in his angel, choir boy face, he’s the honor roll student who’ll shive you in the ribcage.
The women, predictably in this kind of movie, are basically Concerned Wife, or Concerned Girlfriend. Eva Longoria is surpringly competent playing Rodriguez’s significant other and Tammy Trull finds a bruised elegance as Marta, the girl who Christian Bale loves but pokes in the face with a gun anyway. My only real problem, and its small, is the film’s ending, somebody’s gotta die, you know it, I know it, and Ayer certainly knows it, but what if they didn’t? In the case of the otherwise almost terrific “Harsh Times’ the biggest shock would be no shock at all.
- Bowen
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