Hard Times (1975)

Very best movie i ever watch

Film Perfection

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Solid James Colburn, Charles Bronson movie I'd give a 6.7. Very, very good. Surrounded by a great supporting cast including the legendary Strother Martin.Worth the watch.

Magnificent entertainment across the board. Acting, directing, and story all rise to the heights to deliver a quality experience in movie watching. This is a gem and I don't care how many times you see this movie, you will see it again and again guaranteed. Why? It has memorable scenes that are linked by in-between scenes that make you want to view over and over. They are all well done. The depression brought about the title of the movie i.e. "hard times" but then again, there are always people who survive and some do this in the shadows and by preying on others. This be the case here. A street fighter who is just passing through catches an opportunity to make a few bucks as he only has $6.00 left to his name. He has no fear, hesitation or doubt as to what he can do and he just wants to know what the rules are. He then goes from there. It is interesting to point out that this man used to change truck tires for a living before he hit the road. May I point out that that takes enormous, repetitive effort and strength and over time develops your default muscles to a high-honed state of being. This is how Hercules gained his strength too. When he was a boy, his mother required he lift a baby calf over his head ten times before breakfast of which he gladly and easily did. After and over a time, that calf grew into a huge cow but so did Hercules from all that lifting. So it is with this man who packs a power punch and is lean and fast too. What fools his opponents is he is older than they are thus making for high stakes fighting of which we see plenty of. It is also worth mentioning that two other fight scenes were filmed but not included. If they ever find them and then re-release this, they would make millions as this is a beloved classic to all movie lovers. Enjoy Strother Martin, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and quality supporting actors who just make this all make good sense. Great movie to eat a full course meal by and with a tasty drink and snacks to follow for sure. Hard Times is good times guaranteed.

Hard Times is my favorite Charles Bronson film and one of my all time favorite movies. Ideally cast with Bronson as Chaney a mystery man who reveals little of himself while knocking out opponents in bare knuckle brutality, James Coburn co-stars as the cocky and irresponsible Speed who manages Chaney,Strother Martin plays Poe his cut man,and Michael McGuire is a sinister gentleman sportsman who may or may not have been one of the Chicago Black Sox of 1919, and of course Jill Ireland as the world weary Lucy and there is not a false note in any of the performances. Walter Hill's direction is brisk and he keeps the story moving. The cinematography is excellent. You really feel like you are immersed in seedy, dingy Depression era New Orleans.Bronson has fewer then 500 words of dialog but his eyes , his facial expressions, his way of holding his head and his body actions tell his story. Chaney shows up out of nowhere and seems a bit to old to fight bare fisted. He's from the north and he came to make some money is all he will say about himself. Chaney is a role Bronson was born to play.I really am not a boxing fan but Hard Times really pulled me in. It's a great film and tells a wonderful story

It's the Great Depression in New Orleans. Bronson arrives on a freight train with six dollars. Coburn discovers that Bronson has a punch that would penetrate 20 millimeters of steel and they make a lot of cash together participating in pick up fights, sustained only by bets.The fights are brutal. Two shirtless men batter each other until one is insensible. Anything goes in these mano a mano and pata a pata. It's all bare-knuckled fighting, as in a grade-school playground. You can kick an opponent, pull his hair, strangle him, break his back, knee him in the jewels, or ram his head against the wall.Strother Martin is always there as the dope-addicted ex medical student to treat your wounds and bandage you up. But this is Hollywood, not New Orleans in 1935. There's hardly a drop of blood. These guys are real savages, remorseless, and the worst Bronson winds up with is a rather becoming bruise on his temple -- and that only after the climactic fight against the best bare-knuckle fighter in the country, imported, like the gunslinger in "Shane", from elsewhere.If the settings weren't drab enough, with their greenish walls and peeling chintz wallpaper, and the overhead fan that doesn't work, and the spare and spindly furniture, a very portrait of the abandoned railway car I live in, the fights themselves are depressing. As a nation we seem to be turning into a society of cage fighters and air guitar contests. That's for the American man. The American woman can go on afternoon television and sob out her story of sexual abuse as a child. And of course we can all sit back and enjoy American Idol. Man, does our system of values need the services of the failed medical student, Strother Martin. Does he know anything about treating blood poisoning? It isn't the exercise of physical skill that's repulsive. I envy athletes and dancers for being able to do with their bodies things that I could never command mine to do. Jill Ireland, Bronson's whorish sometimes girl friend in the movie, was trained as a ballerina and I admire her for it.It's the objective of the writers and producers that are so repugnant. They're playing to an audience that simply wants to see two behemoths batter each other to the ground. That's the ENTERTAINMENT. It's as if some group of MBAs at Columbia Pictures got together and had a bright idea. Instead of having a story of good and evil with a sprinkling of fist fights, why not make the whole movie about fist fights? The fights themselves follow all the conventions. Bronson's opponents rarely connect. Their round house punches miss by a mile with a great whoosh, while Bronson almost always connects with a sound of braking pottery.If it weren't for that pandering, the movie might be pretty good. Bronson hardly has any lines. He's silent and wears an inscrutable smile. But some of the secondary characters are interesting. Coburn's facial features have never been more mobile. Jill Ireland is appealingly winsome. And there aren't any real villains. The organization that provides Bronson with opponents are men of their word, in a way that Coburn, for instance, isn't. (He recklessly gambles away the debt he owes them.) The period detail has a few anachronisms but is convincing enough, as is the wardrobe. And the ending isn't what the formula demands. Ireland finds another man, more dependable than Bronson, and hooks up with him. And Bronson, who drifted into town in a box car, drifts away into the night.