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Hard Easy, The
HBO // R // May 22, 2007
List Price: $19.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
In the interview with director Ari Ryan on 2005's The Hard Easy, he makes it clear that the movie is lifted from several other sources, which explains why watching it gave me a scorching case of deja vu.
Made about a decade too late, The Hard Easy tries to expand upon an almost impossible task by setting it against a fairly interesting premise. Rather than have one unlovable loser, whose misfortune is all his own, this movie tries to have two of them. And it imposes these hard-luck anti-heroes against the backdrop of an armed robbery where two gangs show up to collect.
This is a heist movie, of a kind, though the usually entertaining portion involving planning and preparation is replaced by what the director calls "character building." Sadly, the characters seem like pastiche jobs of people we've seen before, only more pathetic.
Paul the gambler (Henry Thomas) is in deep to the mob, which threatens not only to ruin his worthless life, but also that of the ex-wife that left him for specifically that reason. Roger the stock broker (David Boreanaz) works at an Enron-type company that, surprise surprise, is about to go under, sending Roger to jail and his wife running for the hills.
Ryan paints the lives of Paul and Roger in equally depressing ways.
In Tahoe, Paul's like is full of dingy brown colors, crappy motel rooms and hitting (unsuccessfully) on cocktail waitresses that are past their prime. In Los Angeles, Roger's world is the pale blue of florescent lights in soulless office buildings and the vast emptiness of coming home to find your wife has left you.
Both men have father figures of a type. Paul's is Vinnie (Gary Busey), a bartender who wonders why Paul never quit when he was ahead. It's through Vinnie that Paul meets the emotionally bitter doctor Charlie (Vera Farmiga) and gets hooked up with a job in a heist.
Less nurturing is Roger's boss Ed (Peter Weller), a former military adrenaline junkie who Roger and his co-workers (Nick Lachey and Elimu Nelson) suspect might have tanked their multi-million-dollar business on purpose. Ed comes up with a plan, however - using an inside connection to rob a diamond merchant on the day when all the diamonds show up to be distributed.
Ed seems plenty crazy (and like he's enjoying the new role too much), so Roger starts questioning him. Weller was great as the emotionless Robocop, but here his over-the-top acting gets a little grating and frankly unbelievable. Not that a diamond heist is super believable, either, but it's Weller's Ed who basically bullies his three intelligent employees into going along with the plan.
Both Roger and Stephen (Nelson) are hesitant, especially when Stephen's family might be able to help them out of the jam, but that's when Ed pulls a gun and...the plan takes a turn.
After a late-night encounter with Dr. Charlie, Paul decides to go through with the plan and meet up with Vinnie's heist expert. He, too, has a lot of questions after seeing Gene (Bruce Dern) and the shack he's living in. Dern's performance is much more studied than Weller's, imbuing Gene with a non-too-subtle menace, despite his soft-spoken words and long gray hair.
Paul is spun further when their inside man is revealed to be the doctor, who says she has her own reasons for being there and that she wasn't trying to con him into the job. I've seen the whole movie and watched the director's interview and listened to the commentary and I can't tell you if she was or wasn't conning him. I can't even really tell you why she wanted to do the job.
Paul's gang, dressed in road construction gear and plastic masks, arrives first and the job is going swell until a minute later when Roger's gang shows up. It quickly turns into a firefight, with Ed and Gene going at each other while Roger waits in the car to drive away.
Paul slips away to find Charlie holding the store's owner at gunpoint because of something done to her father...a year ago...but it's still pretty vague. Paul talks her out of killing the guy, who seems pretty sorry for what he did, and they try to make their escape.
Gene and Ed get bloody in the shootout with Weller's "combat expert" going down pretty easy. Gene joins Paul and Charlie and get in the first getaway car they see...with Roger...and take off for another county.
What follows are some big twists and turns which are really only minor revelations. Charlie's not very nice. Shocker. Vinnie isn't either. It comes down to a gun fight in the desert with some improbable events foreshadowed on the box cover (which I saw online, as my review copy didn't include the case).
The Hard Easy is aptly named in a few ways, chronicling two easy jobs that get harder when they intersect, but it's equally descriptive for a reviewer. The serpentine plot is easy to ridicule as we've seen it time and again in recent films. Like others, this one confuses gunfire and explosions for meaningful conflict resolution or even answers.
The hard part is, it's not all bad. Thomas does some fine, understated acting as the downtrodden Paul and the pacing of the sex scene with Charlie was well done. The protagonists, for all their many, many faults - the kind that don't exactly make you want to root for them - do ask questions that normal people might ask, even if they give up on answers too easily.
There's some ham-fisted acting, too, as well as a few big plot points that rely on characters doing a complete 180-degree turn. The beginning drags, the middle drags and the end comes so fast there's no time to process what's happening - which might be a stylistic choice to show the fierce speed and brutality of a gun battle - or it might just be a gambit to make people forget that The Hard Easy doesn't always make a lot of sense.
The Picture
Shown in 1.66:1 widescreen, the film isn't always crystal clear, but the director planned some of the imperfections. Paul's torture and alcohol use are both accompanied by compressed and grainy pictures. Likewise, Roger's early scenes seem a little washed out, but they're meant to look bleak and spare because of the situation. The transfer seems clean and the disc runs smooth with no delays or hiccups.
The Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is pretty decent when it comes to the big explosions and back-and-forth gunfire of the heist scene. Most of the rest of the film is heated conversation which comes through fine, if a bit unspectacular.
The Extras
Commentary from director Ari Ryan and producer Scott Gold is not as nuts and bolts as I'd like it with a fair amount of self-congratulations tossed in. There are a few interesting tidbits, like how many times they had to rebuild a lamp for the sex scene, etc.
Also included is an interview with Ryan, shot in a window, shown in fullscreen mode. The interview is edited as we fade in and out of conversation with Ryan, who has nothing but good things to say about the story, even if it becomes clear that his skill as a director is mostly lifting from other directors.
The Conclusion
There's nothing inherently bad about The Hard Easy. Despite a hundred other heist movies, audiences still eat up the idea of anti-heroes making a big score. Unfortunately, the story works against the audience, with protagonists who put themselves in bad situations and stakes that are (except for Paul) a bit hazy. The twists and turns of the third act are contradictory - we know they're coming and we don't care what they are - with a conclusion that could have been put together in a montage of any other movie made in the last 10 years. Rent It, but don't be surprised when you've seen it all before.
Made about a decade too late, The Hard Easy tries to expand upon an almost impossible task by setting it against a fairly interesting premise. Rather than have one unlovable loser, whose misfortune is all his own, this movie tries to have two of them. And it imposes these hard-luck anti-heroes against the backdrop of an armed robbery where two gangs show up to collect.
This is a heist movie, of a kind, though the usually entertaining portion involving planning and preparation is replaced by what the director calls "character building." Sadly, the characters seem like pastiche jobs of people we've seen before, only more pathetic.
Paul the gambler (Henry Thomas) is in deep to the mob, which threatens not only to ruin his worthless life, but also that of the ex-wife that left him for specifically that reason. Roger the stock broker (David Boreanaz) works at an Enron-type company that, surprise surprise, is about to go under, sending Roger to jail and his wife running for the hills.
Ryan paints the lives of Paul and Roger in equally depressing ways.
In Tahoe, Paul's like is full of dingy brown colors, crappy motel rooms and hitting (unsuccessfully) on cocktail waitresses that are past their prime. In Los Angeles, Roger's world is the pale blue of florescent lights in soulless office buildings and the vast emptiness of coming home to find your wife has left you.
Both men have father figures of a type. Paul's is Vinnie (Gary Busey), a bartender who wonders why Paul never quit when he was ahead. It's through Vinnie that Paul meets the emotionally bitter doctor Charlie (Vera Farmiga) and gets hooked up with a job in a heist.
Less nurturing is Roger's boss Ed (Peter Weller), a former military adrenaline junkie who Roger and his co-workers (Nick Lachey and Elimu Nelson) suspect might have tanked their multi-million-dollar business on purpose. Ed comes up with a plan, however - using an inside connection to rob a diamond merchant on the day when all the diamonds show up to be distributed.
Ed seems plenty crazy (and like he's enjoying the new role too much), so Roger starts questioning him. Weller was great as the emotionless Robocop, but here his over-the-top acting gets a little grating and frankly unbelievable. Not that a diamond heist is super believable, either, but it's Weller's Ed who basically bullies his three intelligent employees into going along with the plan.
Both Roger and Stephen (Nelson) are hesitant, especially when Stephen's family might be able to help them out of the jam, but that's when Ed pulls a gun and...the plan takes a turn.
After a late-night encounter with Dr. Charlie, Paul decides to go through with the plan and meet up with Vinnie's heist expert. He, too, has a lot of questions after seeing Gene (Bruce Dern) and the shack he's living in. Dern's performance is much more studied than Weller's, imbuing Gene with a non-too-subtle menace, despite his soft-spoken words and long gray hair.
Paul is spun further when their inside man is revealed to be the doctor, who says she has her own reasons for being there and that she wasn't trying to con him into the job. I've seen the whole movie and watched the director's interview and listened to the commentary and I can't tell you if she was or wasn't conning him. I can't even really tell you why she wanted to do the job.
Paul's gang, dressed in road construction gear and plastic masks, arrives first and the job is going swell until a minute later when Roger's gang shows up. It quickly turns into a firefight, with Ed and Gene going at each other while Roger waits in the car to drive away.
Paul slips away to find Charlie holding the store's owner at gunpoint because of something done to her father...a year ago...but it's still pretty vague. Paul talks her out of killing the guy, who seems pretty sorry for what he did, and they try to make their escape.
Gene and Ed get bloody in the shootout with Weller's "combat expert" going down pretty easy. Gene joins Paul and Charlie and get in the first getaway car they see...with Roger...and take off for another county.
What follows are some big twists and turns which are really only minor revelations. Charlie's not very nice. Shocker. Vinnie isn't either. It comes down to a gun fight in the desert with some improbable events foreshadowed on the box cover (which I saw online, as my review copy didn't include the case).
The Hard Easy is aptly named in a few ways, chronicling two easy jobs that get harder when they intersect, but it's equally descriptive for a reviewer. The serpentine plot is easy to ridicule as we've seen it time and again in recent films. Like others, this one confuses gunfire and explosions for meaningful conflict resolution or even answers.
The hard part is, it's not all bad. Thomas does some fine, understated acting as the downtrodden Paul and the pacing of the sex scene with Charlie was well done. The protagonists, for all their many, many faults - the kind that don't exactly make you want to root for them - do ask questions that normal people might ask, even if they give up on answers too easily.
There's some ham-fisted acting, too, as well as a few big plot points that rely on characters doing a complete 180-degree turn. The beginning drags, the middle drags and the end comes so fast there's no time to process what's happening - which might be a stylistic choice to show the fierce speed and brutality of a gun battle - or it might just be a gambit to make people forget that The Hard Easy doesn't always make a lot of sense.
The Picture
Shown in 1.66:1 widescreen, the film isn't always crystal clear, but the director planned some of the imperfections. Paul's torture and alcohol use are both accompanied by compressed and grainy pictures. Likewise, Roger's early scenes seem a little washed out, but they're meant to look bleak and spare because of the situation. The transfer seems clean and the disc runs smooth with no delays or hiccups.
The Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is pretty decent when it comes to the big explosions and back-and-forth gunfire of the heist scene. Most of the rest of the film is heated conversation which comes through fine, if a bit unspectacular.
The Extras
Commentary from director Ari Ryan and producer Scott Gold is not as nuts and bolts as I'd like it with a fair amount of self-congratulations tossed in. There are a few interesting tidbits, like how many times they had to rebuild a lamp for the sex scene, etc.
Also included is an interview with Ryan, shot in a window, shown in fullscreen mode. The interview is edited as we fade in and out of conversation with Ryan, who has nothing but good things to say about the story, even if it becomes clear that his skill as a director is mostly lifting from other directors.
The Conclusion
There's nothing inherently bad about The Hard Easy. Despite a hundred other heist movies, audiences still eat up the idea of anti-heroes making a big score. Unfortunately, the story works against the audience, with protagonists who put themselves in bad situations and stakes that are (except for Paul) a bit hazy. The twists and turns of the third act are contradictory - we know they're coming and we don't care what they are - with a conclusion that could have been put together in a montage of any other movie made in the last 10 years. Rent It, but don't be surprised when you've seen it all before.
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