DVD Reviews

Harsh Times

• Rating:
• Director: David Ayer
• Starring: Christian Bale
• Details: US, 119mins, 15.

Dangerously unhinged ex-Army Ranger Jim David (Bale) leaves Mexico for LA promising his girlfriend Marta (Trull) that he will send for her once he finds a job. However, when he is rejected by the LAPD he cruises around town with unemployed best friend Mike (Rodriquez), much to his live-in girlfriend Sylvia's (Longoria) chagrin. What starts out as two childhood friends letting loose soon turns into an inescapable nightmare of drugs, guns and women.
Sometimes it's all in the title and if your movie has a bleak, hopeless theme about desperate men with nothing to offer society, then you can't go wrong with a name like Harsh Times. Every scene here reinforces writer-director David Ayer's idea that the social order is crumbling and even if people wanted to do something to stop the growing apathy towards social values, they would find themselves helpless to stem the tide. It's a grim, downbeat film and although Ayers covered similar themes (and storylines) with his own Training Day, Harsh Times is an altogether darker film. It is only when Ayers attempts to comment on the big issues like government subterfuge, outsourcing and corporate greed that the dialogue can get a little clunky but Bale and Rodriguez's verbal deliveries elevate it above just pontificating. Bale is a movie star in the truest sense of the word; unafraid to play the bad guy, he can veer widely diverse characters in American Psycho to Batman Begins to The Machinist with ease. Here he shows again what a commanding actor he is. Playing a character who is a rash of contradictions - a loving boyfriend, a cold, professional killer, a pitiful loser and a demented psycho - Bale convinces in every facet. Freddy Rodriguez, who was the best thing in HBO's Six Feet Under, is on form here as Jim's last hope of redemption. How he gave Mike, who on paper must have been a pushover, a powerful screen presence is something I'll never know. Harsh Times is hard watching and you won't be skipping out of the cinema full of the joys of life after this.

Review by Gavin Burke