From the Favorites Shelf: "The Hard Way"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

(And now, a new feature, suggested by hopefully-soon-to-contribute writer Greg Baker. From the Favorites Shelf will be a look back at the movies that didn’t get a fair shake, listed here so hopefully new audiences will check ‘em out. We begin with a personal favorite…)

If there is a lost art in moviemaking, it lies not in the sights we see, but the words we hear. The movies have become incredibly accomplished at showing us everything our imagination could wish for, and astoundingly dumb at crafting memorable things for its characters to say. There was a long time after sound recording was invented where film reveled in its ability to capture both the sight and sound of performers and artists’ work. Nowadays we might as well be back in the silent era, given how little of the dialogue which is uttered is memorable.

This is a rather grandiose way to discuss a cop buddy comedy, I admit, but when I think of “The Hard Way,” what I treasure more than anything is the fact that this is a movie that presumes its audience will keep up with it. Enough dialogue is uttered in this movie to fill two lesser comedies, and all of it is amazingly crafted to further develop the characters involved. This is not a great art-house film or a Tarantino classic, it’s simply a great entertainment that has a ton of great lines…none of which anyone noticed.

“The Hard Way” was made in 1991, was released, bombed, and has since been relatively forgotten save for a few fans who caught it way back when. I keep waiting for this film to find the cult audience it so richly deserves, but it never seems to happen. Michael J. Fox himself, in his excellent memoir “Lucky Man,” relates to this film as the most dismal failure of his career, while reserving fond memories for his relatively successful follow-up “Doc Hollywood.” That is a decent but utterly forgettable film, while “The Hard Way,” in my opinion, is a classic of its genre that has gone unheralded. In the overflowing garbage bin that is the cop buddy genre, here is the cream of the crop.

The movie stars James Woods as a gritty but loveable New York cop named John Moss, and I quote Roger’s line from his original review: “If they hadn’t been able to get him, they would have had to shut down the movie.” Woods has made a career out of playing this kind of role, and in “The Hard Way” it’s like he’s teaching a master class. We like the guy from his very first scene, where he crashes into another car and blares his police lights to clear the road, just because he’s late for a date. But he then gets distracted by a call on the radio - a serial killer by the name of the Party Crasher (creepily played by Stephen Lang), who has the odd tendency of calling the cops before each of his crimes, has just announced another shooting will be happening. This leads to barrage of obscenity from Moss and the first of the movie’s excellently done action sequences, which for once actually enhance rather than distract from the characters.

We then cut to a dead-on parody trailer for a an action film entitled “Smoking Gunn II” (Snarky Announcer: “Where there’s fire, there’s smoke! Where there’s smoke, there’s Joe Gunn!”), starring Hollywood “it” guy Nick Lang (Fox). Lang is tired of making mindless sequels, and wants to expand into more artistically important work. He sees Moss giving an interview post-chase on his satellite dish, and knows instinctively that this is the perfect guy for him to study to prepare for a role as a cop. He arranges through his eternally-exasperated agent Angie (Penny Marshall in a great cameo) and the department to go undercover and shadow Moss, which forces Moss off the Party Crasher investigation - or so it would seem.

As you can see, the plot is nothing particularly special or innovative. What makes everything work is the writing, the performances and the directing (by the undervalued John Badham). The screenwriters, Daniel Pyne and Lem Dobbs, fill their relatively standard story with non-stop dialogue that is both funny and fun to hear spoken. Fox’s Lang is a hyperactive motor mouth with an opinion on everything, and he never hesitates to make it known, whether he has anything worth saying or not. He is also constantly in awe of the “real life” settings he finds himself in, calling his agent to gleefully inform her, “I’m in the ghetto! No, it’s not a tour!”

Woods, meanwhile, brings his own trademark sardonic tone to every moment that Moss is on the screen, and his responses are often laced with some hilariously-used profanity. Upon learning that Lang wants to stay in his apartment, Moss simply responds, “Maybe when my @$$hole learns to chew gum.” And appealing to his captain to send Lang home, “He doesn’t belong here! He belongs in Never-Never Land, with his personal trainer and his assistant and his god-knows-who wipes his @$$ after he pinches off his daily loaf!” If one ever needs an example to point out how swear words, when used properly, can be hilarious comic props, this movie is exhibit one.

The give-and-take between the two characters is complicated by the presence of Moss’s girlfriend Susan (Annabella Sciorra) and her daughter Bonnie (a pre-Addams Family Christina Ricci). Moss cares about Susan a great deal - “I even quit smoking for her,” he proclaims, just before he tosses away the cigarette he’s currently trying to light in his mouth. But he has trouble opening up to her, a fact which Lang (still pretending to be Moss’s partner) unexpectedly complicates when he recites to Susan, verbatim, a speech Moss had said to him about the nature of the job, leading to Susan telling Moss he should be more like Lang. The subplot with Susan adds another level of depth and lovability to the Moss character…without her, he’d be a hard-nosed fireball of anger at all times, but when she’s around, he lets his guard down. When, later in the film, Moss begins to let down his guard around Lang, too, it’s a subtle indication that he maybe has found a way to like the snot-nosed little loudmouth.

The whole thing, of course, is building to the big climactic confrontation between Moss/Lang and the Party Crasher, but not before a few unexpected twists (and a classic dialogue exchange: “Drop the gun!” “Drop the car!” “Drop the gun!” “Drop the car!” “DROP THE GUN!!!”). The final battle somehow finds a way to pay off the evolution of both main characters, be an exciting fight/rescue scene AND pay homage to the finale of “North by Northwest” all at the same time.

Other memorable moments: The Frog-Dog scene. The new car Moss and Lang have to get out of impound, and the fate of their previous car. Lang dictating the contents of Moss’s apartment into a tape recorder. The Party Crasher’s uber-creepy response to Moss’s on-air criticism. How everyone says that the undercover actor looks “just like Nick Lang - only shorter.” How Moss is able to ditch Lang a day into their partnership. Moss, again to the captain: “Not if you tied my tongue to your tailpipe and dragged me 80 miles per hour naked across a field of broken glass!”

But, space is limited. It is truly unfortunate that a film with so many great lines, moments, characters, EVERYTHING has the stigma of the flop attached to it. Yet another reason to completely disregard box office gross as an indicator of artistic success (as if the fact that “The Benchwarmers” is doing well hadn’t made that abundantly clear). If you have never seen this unsung classic, plunk down the couple of bucks it’ll take to rent it, grab some microwave popcorn, and give it a shot. And make sure to turn the volume up. You wouldn’t want to miss any of the 100 or so bits of great dialogue.