Clevercell Very disappointing...

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

coolmegawicked This Aussie crime caper starts promisingly. It introduces an offbeat cast of villains, a clinically-executed heist and a foul smell of duplicity emanating from our heroes' slick lawyer, Frank, aka the world's shiftiest man. So far so 'Lock-Stock', but the film fails to live up to these early expectations.All apparent intricacies within the plot are then swiftly abandoned. Frank, it transpires, is a very bad man indeed, just as our hero-criminals are rather good-humoured, decent sorts. And so our three goodies (Dale, Shane and Mal) go off to work for baddie Frank, knowing full well that he's a baddie and don't seem too astonished when Frank rips them off, stealing their $10 million and Dale's wife. Eventually everyone gets fed up with Frank, and in a truly bizarre final scene, they turn him into a sausage.The underlying flaw in the film is that it fails to explore the characters or situations in a new or interesting way. Furthermore, there is no suspense after the first hour - the tension seems to decrease as the film progresses. And although the brothers interact very entertainingly, we learn next to nothing about their lives together, making it hard to empathise with them, or to feel that they even deserve their final happy end.

Roland E. Zwick The Australian film, `The Hard Word,' is little more than a wan cross between `The Usual Suspects' and `Oceans 11.' In it, Guy Pearce, almost unrecognizable beneath a scraggly beard, plays one of four criminals discharged from prison in order to help mastermind a heist at the famed Melbourne Cup horse race. There's very little that's original or new in this film, with all the generic cliches falling dutifully into place: the release from prison, the inevitable double crosses, the unfaithful wife, the trigger-happy outsider who almost bungles the entire operation with his impetuosity and brashness, and the innocent bystander who, sensing the excitement of life on the dark side, helps the robbers with their getaway. Surprisingly little time is spent on the planning and execution of the heist, and an inordinate amount on getting the men out of prison (they get out once and then, inexplicably for plot purposes, get sent back in again). The performers are good, but their thick Australian accents make much of the dialogue virtually incomprehensible (for non-Aussies that is). That doesn't do much to enhance the clarity of the film. The real problem with `The Hard Word,' though, is that we've seen it all countless times before, only better.

luridlarry This film, though it succeeds in digressing from the standard "Heist Movie" formula (worn down to an imperceptible nub of its once original splendor), makes no effort to be what one would term "good". It seems that Scott Roberts got so caught up in his efforts to avoid convention, that he forgot to give the plot any direction, or make the movie remotely entertaining. There were times when it was clear that he was going out of his way to disappoint expectations, but without results that were worth the effort. More than once a character was introduced that played an important part of the story, that would then disappear completely without apology. If this were to in some way improve the story or the point, I would understand; but instead it came off as a juvenile device. "Look at how unexpected that was. Did you see, nobody ever does that." Well, nobody (at least not anyone that produces a film for public consumption) has put a gerbil in a blender and filmed it, but I'm not gonna expect people to be impressed if I'm the first.While I am tired of the same movie coming out over and over again under different titles, with different superstars playing the same role, I do think that there are conventions in writing that are necessary for all but the few geniuses who know how to break the rules (and usually, they follow others). Certain conventions (creating characters about whom we care and fleshing them out; creating a discernable and engaging plot; moving naturally from event to event) can be utilized in original screenplays. I know. I've seen it done.There is nothing more wrong with convention than there is with originatily. It is only quality that matters. And it is there that this movie fell shorter than legless munchkin.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre 'The Hard Word' is an excellent, well-paced Australian movie, straddling the genres of the American noir caper film and the British thick-ear crime drama. Some of the sequences in this movie remind me of scenes in 'The Asphalt Jungle', 'The Killing', 'La Jetee', the Peter Sellers comedy 'Two-Way Stretch' and even 'Eating Raoul' ... but 'The Hard Word' is definitely a one-off original, and it's very good.The early scenes in this film take place in the Australian prison system. I've done some prison time Down Under (in my original name, before I changed it), and I found these scenes extremely realistic. Seppos and Poms (Yanks and Brits) will have difficulty understanding the Strine slang in this movie; for instance, when an inmate shouts 'Half yer (expletive) luck!', it's not instantly clear to non-Australians that this means 'I wish I was half as lucky as you.' Also, American audiences will be confused by this movie's references to racetrack 'bookies'. In Australia (as in Britain, but unlike in the States), bookies are lawful businessmen ('turf accountants') who privately take bets at sporting events, as independent contractors.And most confusing of all for audiences outside Australia: some of the dialogue in 'The Hard Word' is spoken in 'butcher talk'. This is never explained in the movie, so I'll reveal that butcher talk (or 'rehctub klat') is the dialect used by (real-life) Australian criminals for covert conversations in public ... in which every word is spoken BACKWARDS, very rapidly. Even if you know the secret, you won't understand a conversation in 'butcher' unless you've practised a lot. (In Britain, criminals have a gimmick called 'backslang' which is a simpler version of the same thing.) Several times in 'The Hard Word', the dialogue is brilliantly ambiguous, carrying two meanings at the same go.Three felons are released on the same day: violent Dale, easy-going Malcolm and Pepsi-swilling mother-obsessed Shane. (The dialogue identifies them as brothers; they don't look remotely alike, but that line explains why they stick together no matter what.) As soon as they get out, our lads participate in an armoured-car robbery that's been set up by their crooked lawyer Frank ... but Frank might be setting them up for a fall. And while the lads were 'inside', Frank has been having a go with Dale's sexy wife Carol. Rachel Griffiths, who plays Dale's wife, is not conventionally beautiful ... but in this film she gives one of the sexiest performances I've ever seen on screen.SLIGHT SPOILERS COMING. There are some eye-catching frame compositions in this film; all credit to director/scripter Scott Roberts. But several pieces of business seem to be set up only to create odd images on screen. A rival gangster lures Dale into a trap by disguising himself as Dale's wife and then hiding in their bed with a gun; I found this wildly unlikely. Frank kills another gangster by cramming a lava lamp into his mouth: no blood, no broken teeth; just an interesting visual composition. One long sequence takes place inside a restaurant shaped like a giant cow.An actor named Robert Taylor (doesn't he know that this name's been used before?) is very good as Frank, the brothers' crooked lawyer. Frank dies a horrible death. How to get rid of the corpse? We know that Malcolm is handy with a sausage-grinder, and in the next scene we see him grilling some FRANK-furters on the barbie. That pun is no coincidence. (Damien Richardson is a revelation as Malcolm.)On several occasions, the crooks jeopardise their own well-planned caper by brawling or arguing; I found this a very accurate depiction of criminal behaviour. Yet there's one very implausible plot twist during the robbery at the Melbourne Cup, when Shane is supposed to open a locked door by typing a 4-figure number into a numeric keypad ... but a henchman named Tarzan insists on doing it himself, even though he's dyslexic. Doesn't Tarzan realise that his dyslexia disqualifies him from this job? Sure enough, he mucks it up.During the caper sequences, I kept expecting to see the cliché shot from every caper film ... when a swag-bag rips open, and banknotes go flying in all directions. Blessedly, that hackneyed image never came. For most of its length, 'The Hard Word' commendably avoids clichés. I thought Rhondda Findleton quite sexy as an anger-management counsellor with a semi-Louise Brooks hairbob, but I was annoyed when her character became that prison-movie cliché: the sexy female prison staffer who goes home every night and can get any man she wants on the outside, yet who becomes sexually involved with one of the inmates a few minutes after she meets him! I couldn't believe that this woman would be having sex with Shane ... it would have been much more plausible if she had merely **led him on**, arousing herself with his sexual frustration while offering him no release.At the very end of this flick, the three brothers and Carol are striding purposefully towards the camera. 'Please', I thought, 'please do NOT commit that horrible cliché of freeze-framing the final shot.' Instead of a freeze-frame, the final image went into a slo-mo ... which is also a cliché, but not quite so hackneyed yet. Despite a few complaints, I'm vastly impressed with this highly entertaining movie. I'll rate 'The Hard Word' 8 points out of 10. Nice one, cobber!