THE HARD WAY (1991) - Kino Lorber Blu-Ray Review

[AndyDursin]

THE HARD WAY
5/10

Michael J. Fox and James Woods failed to generate fireworks in John Badham's NYC cop-buddy movie THE HARD WAY (111 mins., 1991, R), a good-looking Spring '91 Universal release that's just “missing something.” Woods plays the perennial “James Woods role” of a fast-talking, intense, nervous Big Apple cop saddled with a glib movie star (Fox) who's shadowing him for his latest role. While the duo track a real psychotic killer (Stephen Lang), they spar over the nature of police work as well as Woods' relationship with a single mom (Annabella Sciorra).

“The Hard Way” was attractively shot in scope, nearly all of it on-location in NYC, but revisiting the film here in Kino Lorber's Blu-Ray confirmed my initial, high school viewing of the picture that left me underwhelmed nearly 30 years ago. Daniel Pyne and Lem Dobbs' script seems like it needed another rewrite or two, as the finished product isn't nearly funny enough to work as a comedy, nor is it exciting enough to score as an action-thriller. In the disc's new commentary, Badham says early drafts were more serious, but what's on-screen in the picture needed a lot more work to make it punchier and funnier. Another major problem is that Woods and Fox are both Type A on-screen personalities and while they “clash,” they don't mesh well in this particular story set-up – what you see from both characters initially is all you get, and the film does little but repeat the same, grating banter between them from start to finish.

Badham also reveals that the film was set to star Gene Hackman as the cop and Kevin Kline as the Hollywood star – that's a big 180 from what's here and also might've been more interesting, seeing as both stars bring more nuance typically than Fox and Woods do in their performances. In the end, Kline bailed late to headline a new Broadway show and Hackman subsequently didn't want to appear opposite Fox – resulting in an odd and ineffective vehicle for its mismatched leads, with Fox coming off as particularly miscast as a diva star.

A box-office disappointment at the time of its release, the R-rated “Hard Way” did little to expand Fox's commercial appeal post-”Back to the Future,” and here makes a belated U.S. debut on Blu-Ray thanks to Kino Lorber (Universal itself had released the film in most overseas markets several years back). This is a serviceable but older Universal master (2.35) that varies a little from scene to scene in terms of its graininess, though colors are strongly rendered and the original Dolby Stereo sound is nicely conveyed via a two-channel DTS MA track (Arthur B. Rubinstein's energetic score is one of the film's strongest elements). The before-mentioned commentary with Badham and his producer/second unit director Rob Cohen is especially engaging here, even with the participants joined over phone/computer, as they outline the practical production of the film, shooting in Times Square (which would never be allowed to the same degree now), and the original Hackman/Kline conception of the project.

[AndyDursin]

Ebert definitely OFF on this one.