Review of The Hard Way (1991) by Rebecca H — 03 Nov 2008

The flimsy, barely-there plot of The Hard Way is about angry cop John Moss (James Woods) wanting to catch serial killer the Party Crasher (Stephen Lang) but being unable to as he has been stuck with undercover actor Nick Lang (Michael J Fox), who is researching for a role. John and Nick irritate each other, John's fledgling relationship with Susan (Annabella Sciorra) isn't working out and the Party Crasher, occasionally murdering people, hates John. That's the plot. There's no character development or detective work, two elements essential in buddy cop movies, and yet the film is heaving with cliches, which would work if handled in a tongue in cheek manner, after all the film does send up some cop drama cliches, but most are meant to be taken seriously.

Wood's performance, angry, fast-talking and foul mouthed, does not come across as a real person, or a real detective as he doesn't do any police/detective work, just beats people up or threatens them, so he quickly becomes an irritating bore to watch. His mostly-off-screen relationship with new girlfriend Susan is also hard to believe. Neither seems to have any interest in the other's personality, and Susan gabbles and laughs nervously but doesn't appear to have anything else to her. Towards the end of the film she dumps John as it is too dangerous to date a cop, a fact she would surely have thought about sooner, she is then instantly proved correct when she is kidnapped by the villain, so why are John and Susan a couple at the end of the film?

Set in a neon-filled, noisy, dirty, dark, overpopulated New York, The Hard Way is not enjoyable visually. Every scene in a public place is packed wall to wall with extras, with irritating cuts to street dancers in the middle of action sequences, and there are far too many supporting characters who at most get three scenes to have a line in, and all this gritty, dark, crowdedness makes a lot of the scenes hard to follow. The only visually interesting set is that of the giant Nick Lang billboard, Fox's enormous head, smoking a cigarette, which becomes involved in both the starting action sequence and the ending. This is advertising the film within the film, Smoking Gunn II, which amusingly spoofs action/adventure films. It is worrying that Smoking Gunn II looks a lot more enjoyable than The Hard Way. However, even this is overused and repetitive, as two action scenes at the end of the film, one following the other, parody Smoking Gunn II, one in a cinema and one on the billboard.

It is difficult to understand, and unexplained, why the police have so much trouble catching the Party Crasher when they constantly witness him committing crimes, so it becomes tedious how many times he is caught/wounded/trapped but always magically escapes. This is also the worst performance of the film. What is Stephen Lang going for? He comes across as mentally disabled, his 'only kill bad people' crusade is never gone into and he is so underdeveloped that it makes no sense he is given scenes on his own.

The Hard Way is a dull, cliched cop thriller minus the thrills, held together entirely by Fox's amusing and energetic performance as actor Nick Lang. We have to wonder how similar Fox's own life at this time was to Lang's spoilt rich lifestyle.