Hard Men (1996)

Here's an OK film with some good scenes, but an atrocious story. Everything you need to know is established in 15 minutes and when they step back from it to create the gangsters they end up too wooden and sentimental to be believable. Pockets of imagination are squashed with regularity. Other brit gangster films are much better! Frankie Fraser, a real gangster, is included to give the film some authenticity, but he only succeeds in hamming up the scenes he appears in. The protoganist gets a call during a hold up that involves listening to his new born daughter gurgle at him. Cue a confirmed ex-gangster trying to then break free from the shackles of crime. Frankie Fraser says the son I never had; humour among thieves nonsense and his two partners after displaying strong affections for each other gladly accept to do the hit on him... only he susses and here's the only twist worth mentioning. It even ends with redemption too. Everyone dies except him and he's goes to costs del crime and becomes a free man. Phew!

Back in the Fifties, many a movie seemed to require one or other of its characters to say: 'hey, let's put on a show!'. In what may have passed for the gestation of this film, someone, perhaps the writer / director, said: 'Hey, let's make a movie!' The result now is much the same as the result way back then, except that in those Fifties disasters the people on each side of the camera had a reasonable idea of what they were doing. No such luck here: if I'd had to sit through this as a graduation piece from young film makers, the most charitable verdict would've been that 'Hard Men' is to movie making what Jeffrey Archer is to English Literature. In other words, no connection.The movie doesn't so much take to the screen as set up house in a cliche -- guns, shouting, more guns, more shouting, bad language, guns, bad language, guns. As reportage it's dismal. As fiction it's unsustainable. The acting is of a standard to make one wish to hand out Oscars to those responsible for 'Night of the Lepus' ('Attack of The Killer Rabbits') and the direction as consistent as a weathervane in a hurricane. But that ol' Fifties magic lingers on, for a third of the way through the director finally loses the plot altogether and it's time for 'hey, let's put on a show!' -- whereupon one or other of the mass murderers turns to the camera and sings about his newborn baby.Come back, Ed Wood. All is forgiven.Rating: unrateable.

You get the impression from the other reviews on this page that this is one of those films you love or hate.Well there has to be someone to spoil it, so I'll put my two pennies worth in. I like the film even though it has many flaws. The three main actors are very watchable and the film passes real quick which is a sign of a well paced effort.Sure it borrows moments from many other films but then again which film of the last 40 years hasn't?Cliched, violent and derivative it may be, but I still stayed with it to the end, and it does have a lot of style. Get Carter it may not be, but a damn fine effort never-the-less.

This is a hopeless mistake of a film. The director has taken some elements of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Trainspotting", mixed them up with "Get Carter" and forgotten that all those films were reliant on real creative talent. This film is derivative, pointlessly violent, horribly unfunny and badly acted.