1975 Directed by Walter Hill
In the depression, Chaney, a strong silent streetfighter, joins with Speed, a promoter of no-holds-barred street boxing bouts. They go to New Orleans where Speed borrows money to set up fights for Chaney, but Speed gambles away any winnings.
The great Walter Hill's detectable style is already fleshed out to a large degree with his debut, an impressive period drama/actioner, that's gifted with a peerless one-two punch of a top-billed cast in Bronson and Coburn.
This depression-era tale of bare-knuckle brawlers, and the con men who profit from them, is pitch-perfect tonally from start to end. Bronson is smartly cast, in one of his finest roles, as the largely stoic drifter simply looking to make some money outside of minimal paying part-time work. Coburn, of course, oozes fast-talking charm as Bronson's possible manager. It's the third time these two shared the screen, and they play off each other beautifully. It's hard imagining these roles played better by anyone else,…
Walter Hill directs this Depression Era-based fighting-drama, starring Charles Bronson and James Coburn. A straightforward but very well-crafted and engaging piece of work that I'd say is a high-point for everyone involved.
Bronson plays a travelling drifter who befriends a sleazy promoter of bare-handed brawls named Speed. He makes a living for himself in New Orleans, competing against tough opponents and making a good amount of money for Speed. Sadly enough, mishandling of the earnings and a bad gambling habit brings Speed into deeper trouble with the local mob, who continue to threaten him until he pays off his debts.
Like Hill's other works, it's a very male-dominated work, though it's not another one of Bronson's action romps where he…
Walter Hill's first film is a great film and not just because it has Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Strother Martin in it, but because it has Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Strother Martin delivering peak fucking performances, still latched onto the prime of their on-screen mojo. They manage to spark humanity and machismo and mystery into characters that otherwise have literally no back story or personality on the page, which in return helps to mythologize these movie icons as the movie icons they are. Walter Hill had an enviable run there, right up through the 90s.
HARD TIMES is one of my TOP 5 Charles Bronson movies. Hell, maybe even one of my TOP 3 movies! And interesting enough, this si also the directorial debut of Walter Hill, who is one of my favorite directors. Its almost a perfect movie that can easily be put next to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, DEAD WISH, BREAKHEART PASS, and couple of other Bronson's top films.
Hill's directing is excellent, fights are raw and gritty, and extremely fun to watch, while the atmosphere that faithfully evokes the period of depression era of the 30's is spot on. Partially that's achieved thanks to the fantastic and moody blues/jazz score from Barry de Vorzona.
As always, Bronson is perfect…
Director: Walter Hill (Fourth Film)
Walter Hill's directorial debut uses its setting pretty well in order to characterise an otherwise unknown quantity in Charles Bronson's Chaney, a self-made veteran of life and hardships. The film begins with him arriving in town, we understand he's a drifter, and then he discovers a street-fighting ring and wants in.
The film is essentially about the characters that fill the street-fighting world; with Bronson being the drifter who wants in-and-out quickly in order to get cash quickly; and the overall result is actually pretty good. Admittedly I've never seen Bronson in anything, and in reality to me; he before this, was just a mere myth created out of pure masculine juice and…
"Well, Chaney? We oughta say somethin'."
Always fun to watch a director's first feature and see almost everything that would make them great present and accounted for, definitely the case with Walter Hill here. His Jean-Pierre Melville-meets-Edward Hopper-with-a-lot-of-punching style is in full force, but what really makes this work is the very Hill clash of personalities between Coburn and Bronson - the latter laconic and assured, the former a consummate motormouth hustler.
Also, Coburn's character's name is Speed Weed.
Where all of the other fighters in this movie look like large slabs of meat flailing about their giant man hands at one another there's an undeniable craft in every swing taken by Bronson. The man can throw a punch. Bronson's steely, silent demeanor is balanced out by Coburn's flamboyant, used car salesman approach. I wish Hill would have put a little more love into the script but it's filled with a kind of lost artform of machismo that we don't see in our antiheroes anymore.
Less Fat City meets Bound for Glory than Paper Moon as a narrative mode on Street Fighter. The depression figures less as a hard reality than an abstracted backdrop, factories and prisons as makeshift bare knuckle arenas that comment on the era like an art installation might, though a bunch of poor drifters beating the shit out of each other for pittance on the black market when the legal market doesn't provide is plenty commentary in itself.
This is more a less a Bronson actioner with intimations of something more prestige, Walter Hill's widescreen competitions constantly pitting insignificant drifters against decaying infrastructure semi-obscured by expressionistic shadows. Hill de-romanticizes the sport, emphasizing the void of 2 guys surrounding by a claustrophobic…
Walter Hill stats as he means to go on, with a tough, detailed film that's got a lot under its' callused skin. A potentially straight-forward sporting film gets an extra inch or two in depth from the careful settings and this is one of Charles Bronson's last real performances before he slid into generic vehicle crap, his withdrawn body language and clipped speech clearly marking him as a figurehead for the drifters of the Great Depression; once again James Coburn is a great foil, overtly more eye-catching but in a way that only draws attention to his partner.
Great Bronson film. He is great James Coburn is great too. the directing by Walter Hill is pretty solid as well.
Walter Hill's impressive debut is a steady-handed, cool expression of old-Hollywood rugged movies for men, free of the tired, subversive commentary that typically comes with movies from the seventies made by the movie brat generation.
Charles Bronson is his bad self, expressing himself with side-glances, smirks and fists, with as few words as possible. The real star of the show is James Coburn as the shifty fight manager with a shark's grin, navigating the deadly waters of depression-era New Orleans, conning fighters, dodging debt collectors, and haggling with promoters. According to Hill, Coburn didn't like playing second-fiddle to Bronson, but he actually feels like the main character. Even though he's a scumbag, you worry more for his survival than Bronson's.…
Charles Bronson is so extraordinary here that It's hard to imagine this film working with anyone else as Chaney.
I made the mistake of buying the new Masters of Cinema blu-ray of Hard Times (which is great), the same week that the new Paramore album came out, which contains a single titled Hard Times. It was stuck in my head for the duration of the film's runtime.
Hard times, gonna make you wonder why you even try
Hard times, gonna take you down and laugh when you cry
These lives, and I still don't know how I even survive
Hard times, hard times
And I gotta get to rock bottom, uh
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