Review of Hardware (1990) by Lee ? — 24 Mar 2011

I have been led to believe by a number of sources, that this is a cult classic that needs to be viewed. Having watched it I thought it was a low budget, mid 80's straight to DVD film of the type me and my friends watched by the dozen while at school/ college, but upon checking I found that this was made in 1990 which would make it contemporaries with films like the Abyss, Star Trek V, Back to the Future III, Predator II and Total Recall.

I'm probably being unfair. It does have some critical acclaim, was made on a tiny budget and made its money back several times over. All of these things do not make up for the appalling production values more fit to a rock video, which isn't suprising as this is what Richard Stanley is more known for. That also explains the stunt casting of Iggy Pop and Lemmy whose awful acting is only just above the standard demonstrated by the rest of the cast. It also probably explains the artistic pretentions it actually has, the one colour scenes, blaring rock music, use of holocost and war imagery inserted via the television, into many scenes. The choice of Dylan McDermott for the lead is for anybody watching this in hindsight of his later choices just makes his hardman survival specialist, completely unbelieveable. Stacy Travis by comparrisson does a much better job while still being quite wooden.

The ripped off 'Paris Texas' soundtrack over the early scenes which established the post apocalyptic nature of the world were much better. It also does have a good concept at heart and the TV advert which plays after the climax is chilling, but by all accounts the story/concept was ripped off a 2000AD story so I cannot even give the Director credit for that. This was a big dissapointment.