Review of Harsh Times (2005) by Andrew M — 12 Mar 2012
It's got it's decent moments, but basically it's Rodriguez and Bale running around doing crazy shit and being lousy human beings. The final 20 minutes are finally where a story comes into play because for the rest of the film it's exactly what I just said above.
They keep playing Longoria's character and making her think Rodriguez is looking for a job and they get hammered and do something crazy. There's also the part about Bale becoming a Fed-but everything is underplayed so we can see the relationship between Bale and Rodriguez.
In the final act of the film we finally get to see that his flash backs to the war are messing him up-and I feel that if the flashbacks had been more interspersed with the rest of the film and we could see them leading him into some of the crazy scenarios-then maybe you'd feel a bit more sympathetic to Bale's character-but not once was I ever sympathetic, in fact by the end of the film I hated his character because he seemed more like a one dimensional being of chaos rather than a full fledged three dimensional character that had a little bit of thought put into his existence other than "I'm going to rob this Mexican, hahaha.
.." It could have been more, but it wasn't. It's not a terrible waste of two hours, but it's not a very good one at that.
This review of Harsh Times (2005) was written by Andrew M on 12 Mar 2012.
Harsh Times has generally received positive reviews.
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