Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Harsh Times Blu-ray Movie Review

American Psychos.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 28, 2011

Is there a more naturally intense actor working today than Christian Bale? Bale seemingly seethes with barely controlled fury in any number of portrayals, and despite a generally chameleon like quality which allows him to fully inhabit completely disparate characters, there’s a shared focus and passion to all of his work that sometimes can actually undercut the validity of a film. Anyone who’s seen Bale running nude through an apartment hallway with a chainsaw in American Psycho can probably relate to the fact that when an actor is as unbelievably potent as Bale usually is, things can teeter uncomfortably close to self-parody, at least some of the time. This very intensity has gotten Bale into some trouble off screen as well (his infamous rant on the set of Terminator: Salvation is a good example), and his persona is so vigorous onscreen that when he appears as "just himself" (as in the recent Academy Awards), it's almost unbelievable that this affable, English-accented gentleman is the same person who regularly burns up the screen. It’s also sometimes hard to remember that this was the sweet child actor who came to prominence in Steven Spielberg’s oddly often forgotten Empire of the Sun. Perhaps it was simply Bale’s youth that made that performance less over the top than some of the actor’s adult work, or perhaps it was the guiding hand of a firm but nurturing director, something that Bale hasn’t always had the benefit of in his adult career. When Bale's natural intensity is channeled by someone like Christopher Nolan, there's no finer actor working today. When Bale is left to his own perhaps at least intermittently self-indulgent devices, things are a bit dicier. Harsh Times falls into a sort of middle ground, both in terms of the film generally and Bale's work within it. Bale is never less than viscerally, gut-wrenchingly watchable throughout this movie, a gritty look at post traumatic stress order and the slow, steady dissolution of a couple of buddies' American Dream and/or Nightmare. But there's also an almost lunatic frenzy to this film, and to at least moments of Bale's depiction of war veteran Jim Davis, that make Harsh Times more about technique than about story.

Films have long wallowed in the depiction of souls slowly but surely dripping down the drain into destitution and, quite frequently, ultimately death. But typically films tend to focus on one character as the rest of the cast is left to react. There are of course exceptions like The Days of Wine and Roses or, perhaps tonally less similar, Thelma and Louise, but Harsh Times is interesting in that it posits two interconnected guys whose spirals are part and parcel of their friendship. Jim Davis (Bale) is a returning war vet—supposedly the Iraq conflict, according to writer-director David Ayer's commentary—whose best buddy is Mike (Freddy Rodriguez). Jim and Mike spend the bulk of the film trying (or at least pretending to try) to find employment, with Jim's desire to be a policeman getting thwarted almost immediately, which leads him (and ultimately Mike) into the shadowy world of Homeland Security and eventually some unseemly criminal activity. Mike has the probably unfortunate habit of tagging along after Jim no matter what Jim’s passing whims may be, and that creates a synergistic element of dissolution that colors Harsh Times in an emotionally corrupt and fractured way that makes it hard for the audience to drum up much sympathy for either character.

In fact what sympathy there may be in this film, written and directed by Training Day’s scenarist David Ayer, is reserved almost wholly for at least one of the women sucked into the maelstrom Jim and Mike’s escapades. Mike’s long-suffering spouse Sylvia (Eva Longoria, more a desperate housewife in this film than she ever has been in her long-running television series) is shown to be at least a partially unforgiving harridan. Mike’s self-sacrifice had put Sylvia through law school, but now that he has hit a long term wall of unemployment, she can’t do much else other than scream epithets at him. On the other hand, Jim’s Mexican girlfriend Marta (Tammy Trull) is Harsh Times’s one true innocent, a character caught up in a nightmare from which she can’t extract herself. The relationship between Jim and Marta is really the emotional core of this film, despite its emphasis on the buddy-buddy aspect between Jim and Mike. And the only real tragedy of any of this film’s characters is Marta’s story.

Training Day also dabbled in elements of bad influence, but Harsh Times ups the moral ambiguity ante up considerably, and not always to good effect. When there’s nothing but bad behavior, splitting hairs over shades of gray becomes irrelevant. Ayer wants to hint at potential salvation, at least for a couple of characters, while painting the bulk of the film in such broad strokes of despair and destruction that any saving grace seems like an afterthought at best. Ayer's approach here feels like a gang-banger wannabe, a sort of filmmaking equivalent to a rich white kid who adopts a gang patois and hip-hop ambience in the hopes that he’ll achieve some sort of passing street cred. Too much of Harsh Times plays like a pretend version of the actual down and dirty South Los Angeles experience.

Very little fault can be laid solely at the feet of Bale and the other actors. As usual, Bale fully inhabits this role, even when he’s forced to go off the actorly deep end due to the vagaries of Ayer's conception of Jim as an unhinged lunatic who can nonetheless “pass” for normal when he has to. Rodriguez is slimily lugubrious as Mike, but manages to also convey an undercurrent of vulnerability and perhaps even naïvete that makes his character at least potentially more sympathetic than Jim. Longoria is saddled with a one-note approach to Sylvia and can’t do much other than bitch incessantly in this film. The real heartstring tugger is Trull as Marta in a nicely modulated performance that manages to skirt Ayer's tendency toward the lachrymose while never avoiding the actual emotionalism of the character.

Harsh Times will probably still appeal to Bale fans, especially those who actually like (if not prefer) the actor in his “hopped up” mode. Even in a film this structurally problematic and with a screenplay that is perhaps too ambitious while being simultaneously pretentious, Bale’s presence is a dangling high voltage wire, flitting about like an electrified serpent, and just as vital and deadly.

Harsh Times Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Harsh Times is one of those films that is going to separate videophiles into two distinct camps. Should every Blu-ray look similarly pristine and sharp no matter what the source elements? Or should it accurately reflect the original theatrical presentation? If you fall into that second category, you'll probably be reasonably pleased with the film's AVC encoded 1080p presentation in 1.78:1, as long as you keep in mind Ayers filmed this piece in Super 16, a format not exactly known for its overwhelmingly sharp and clear image. Add to that a number of processed shots, as in the opening "night vision" dreamscape, and several other desaturated and abundantly grainy segments, and you have a film that does not shy from a gritty, grimy look, and in fact seems to want to exploit that look as much as possible. Therefore a great deal of fine detail is lost and scenes can vary rather largely in terms of detail and contrast, and some of the darker scenes feature grain which tilts toward digital noise levels. A lot of the film has been filtered toward the yellow side of things, adding a hallucinatory edge to many scenes.

Harsh Times Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

An incredibly forceful and robust lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix assaults the listener throughout much of Harsh Times, starting right off the bat with the hallucinatory dream sequence which is punctuated by gunshots and the deep LFE "thump thump" of the soundtrack music. While the film treads a fine line between sensationalized action elements and quieter, "kitchen sink drama" fare, the soundtrack is able to present both sides of the aural equation with equal ease. Dialogue and the ubiquitous source cue underscore are clear and precise, and very well mixed. When the film explodes in gunfire or other violence we get an incredibly immersive, punchy mix that fills the surrounds with all manner of explosive effects.

Harsh Times Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080i; 12:55) offers some additional and passingly interesting scenes featuring J.K. Simmons and Longoria, among others, but it features less than stellar video quality a lot of the time.
• Making of Harsh Times (1080i; 24:27) is an interesting piece featuring Ayer talking about not just self-financing the film, but shepherding it through a long and difficult gestation period.
• Feature Commentary. Ayer proves to be an above average commentator, giving a lot of background on the film's distinctive look, its many locations in and around L.A., and his interactions with the cast.

Harsh Times Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Harsh Times is one of those films which ardently want to prove how "real life" down and dirty it is by portraying a host of conflicted and troubled souls in the throes of moral degradation. That doesn't exactly make for a feel good cinema experience, and Ayer further complicates matters by making his two lead characters fairly unsympathetic throughout. However, if you're a Bale fan, you'll probably want to check out this film for its blistering lead performance. Depending on your point of view, it's either good news or bad that Bale does not appear nude with a strategically placed chainsaw anywhere in this film.