Review of Harsh Times (2005) by Xgary X — 21 Jan 2011

A Gulf war veteran and "homie" cruise the streets of L.A. on the pretext of looking for work getting wasted and dabbling in street crime. Harsh Times sounds like the kind of gritty urban crime drama in the vein of Narc or Training Day, but it is in fact a rather aimless movie that enjoys showing lots of "homies" in the "hood" talking about their "biatches".

I think there's some kind of message about post traumatic stress hidden in there somewhere, but the script was clearly written by Beavis and Butthead after a marathon session on crass Xbox game Saint's Row so the dialogue basically just consists of "Yo s'up dawg" "Word homie jus' chillin'" "We is da booooomb mutherf*cker" etc etc ad infinatum.

Which is positively surreal when you see it eminating from the mouth of Christian Bale and not Snoopy Snoopy Dog Dog. There's plenty of incident because of the casual violence and drug use that is scattered throughout the "story", but ultimately the characters are so two dimensional that you don't really give a crap about any of them and far from seeming like a troubled, complex individual, Bale just comes across as the biggest asshole in the world.

One of those films that can only be loved by middle class white boys who desperately want to be black.