Review of The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009) by Chads. — 19 Aug 2009

"The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" is the sort of slack movie where the comic bits take precedence over the storyline. As a result, the characters have the substance of cardboard, but in this case, the cardboard is interesting because it's made of archetypes.

Don Ready(Jeremy Piven) and his associates are badass used car salesmen for hire, who could only exist in the movie world. Put them on horses and the allusion to Westerns become more obvious. But still, a vestige of the cowboy survives, even in the modern trappings of an airplane, as Don lights up a cigarette like the Marlboro man.

Don is a descendant of your classic Western hero; he has no place to call home; he's a wanderer. When Ben Selleck(James Brolin) summons Don and his possee into town, the car salesmen lodge at the Hacienda Courts(read: ranch), and hang out at the strip club(read: saloon).

Instead of moving livestock, they move cars(the lot is the frontier). Ivy(Jordana Spiro), the boss' daughter(read: the sheriff's daughter), tames Don's wandering spirit when she chooses the outlaw over the gentleman(Ed Helms plays a "man"-band wanna-be), but in the postscript, the happy ending is undermined by the forces of filmic history: a wandering spirit can't be domesticated.

They split up after two years. Primarily an absurdist comedy, "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" tries to be funny, then tries to be serious(an awkward transition since the people are cardboard), when it looks like Don isn't going to get the girl.

John Wayne never said, "The only thing in this world I love is [horses]," but that's the idea Ethan Edwards seems to be expressing at the end of John Ford's "The Searchers".

Don feels the same way about cars, and in the long run, he makes good on his declaration.