The Hard Way (1991)

The Hard Way, directed by John ‘Saturday Night Fever’ Badham, stars Michael J. Fox, and James Woods. Woods plays tough NYPD detective John Moss hot on the tail of the more camp than Butlins serial killer, the ‘Party Crasher’. Accurately named, he crashes parties by turning up to clubs and shooting people.

Meanwhile down in Hollywood, Smoking Gunn 2, the latest blockbuster from actor Nick Lang (J. Fox) is about to be released. Lang feels typecast as the dashing Joe Gunn, think part Indiana Jones, part ripe camembert. Pining for a role he can sink his teeth into, and longing to appear in a movie without “a god damn Roman numeral in the title”. He wants to be Ray Casanov, cop with attitude. Sadly the studio wants Mel Gibson, so Lang has two weeks to prepare for a screen test.

Lang has seen Moss on the news, just after he lost the Crasher for the fourth time in the films opening high speed pursuit. He decides Moss is the real life Casanov. The only way Lang can prepare for the role is to shadow Moss and get under his skin for two weeks to learn how to be a cop.

Now off the Party Crasher case, Moss is hacked off with the “bullshit” of having to babysit Lang, now known as Casanov. Moss’s Captain, played by Delroy Lindo, makes it clear he can either do it “the easy way, or the hard way”. You don’t have to be Derren Brown to know it will be the latter.

Will Moss do everything he can to lose Lang? Will Lang get to fire a real gun? Can Moss have a relationship with Susan without his stressful cop lifestyle and bad attitude getting in the way? Will they get the Crasher? And more importantly will they have a life affirming conversation which makes them realise they have more in common then they first thought?

Looking at The Hard Way now, it still holds up as an entertaining buddy movie. It is well written, with some great references, including a poke at Scientology. Its strongest asset remains the acting, Fox and Woods both turn out great performances. Fox got the chance to move away from his more family orientated films and TV work, whilst Woods gets to let off some steam in an exaggerated and clichéd performance of ‘movie cop’. Personally I’m not sure how this would have played out with another cast and thankfully I don’t have to.

There is also a great supporting cast including Luis Guzmán, and LL Cool J, in minor roles as Moss’s fellow detectives, Annabella Sciorra as Susan, and a young Christina Ricci as Susan’s daughter. Those eagle eyed viewers will also spot male model Fabio at the night club at the start of the film. He handled this role with panache so with talk of a planned Thor movie, surely Fabio will get the call?

Sadly the Hard Way would go on to be one of Badham’s last decent films after showing promise with such ‘young Nick’ friendly fare as Wargames, and Short Circuit. He followed this up with 1993’s pointless America remake of Luc Besson’s fantastic Nikita, Point of No Return (aka ‘The Assassin’ to British audiences, and ‘a waste of time, Gabriel Byrne, and Bridget Fonda to the rest of the cinema loving world’). Badham now directs for TV, and has recently worked on shows such as Heroes and The Shield.

Interestingly The Hard Way was the first 15 certificate film I saw at the cinema. I was 11 and clearly far too cool for school. Telling my friends about the achievement was far more satisfying (at the time) than the film itself. I’m not really sure what I was expecting about seeing a ‘15’, I mean the ticket buying procedure was the same, the snacks were still over priced, they didn’t change the carpets or anything. What you did get, before the film, was a massive round circle on the screen which said ‘suitable for people over the age of 15 only’. Obviously I did tell my friends that it was a completely different experience, and that they did change the carpets.

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