Once I found out there was a film starring Burt Reynolds, Charles Durning, Robert Loggia, Billy Dee Williams and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, I knew I had to see it. I immediately started drooling when I heard the cast from a fellow gentlemen. When he told me it was streaming on Netflix, I hopped straight over and hurled the film to the top of my “to review for the GBtMC” list.
I almost backed out in trepidation, as I seen it was a made-for-TV movie (it aired on TNT). There’s a certain stigma surrounding made-for-TV films. One that plagues direct to DVD productions. One automatically thinks it’s of a lower quality. Why else wouldn’t it hit the big screen? Especially with such a cast behind it.
Fear not, gentlemen (and gentlewomen)! Despite being a made-for-TV production, “Hard Time” is an entertaining watch. And not in the “train wreck” sense. If anything, I believe it was aired on TNT in the hopes that it may start a new series (there are quite a few television pilots that are feature length). I could be completely wrong and just hoping that was the case, as I would have loved to see Logan McQueen (Burt Reynolds) some more!
The film (directed by and starring Burt Reynolds) is nothing new. Reynolds plays Logan McQueen, a detective who is classified as a loose cannon. Along with his partner and longtime friend, Charlie Duffy (Charles Durning), he bends the rules in order to get the job done. This has gotten him six spankings from the county, as Captain Adam Gunther (Buck Taylor) states. It’s also reduced him to graffiti duty, though Duffy makes us believe he hooked them up with the gig so they can relax.
When a chase and shootout occurs between Logan and Catarato Estevez (Paco Christian Prieto), McQueen is framed for killing the crook’s partner. He’s also believed to have stolen some money from the briefcase, which belonged to kingpin Connie Martin (Robert Loggia). Logan has to prove his innocence or face jail time (which he already spent some, making friends with a transvestite).
The plot itself is never so much convoluted as it is streamlined. There are twists and turns, but they’re not too hard to predict. It’s never overtly confusing, which makes sense considering it was playing to a broad audience on cable who were looking for a detective flick, but one that wouldn’t rack the brain. This is more along the lines of “Law & Order” with some gunplay thrown in. For that, it works well.
The shootouts in both the beginning and end are sufficient (though the opening is dragged out a bit). The hand to hand combat is a bit more juicy. There’s a brief, but satisfying fight sequence between Reynolds and Piper that quenched my thirst. Going into the film, I was hoping they’d duke it out. I wasn’t disappointed. I may have wanted more from the “Hot Rod”, but I understood his limited screen time. His sole task was to be one of Loggia’s henchmen and he fit the bill nicely.
The acting itself is above par for what one expects in a made-for-TV film. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the task. Reynolds and company do ham it up and shout loudly a lot (in this environment, you have to be macho), but there are moments where sentimentality comes through. One scene in particular has Logan talking to Leo Barker (Billy Dee Williams) and showing remorse for his actions. It’s in this scene that we discover his true passion for the business and that he’s nothing without his badge.
What holds the film together is the relationship between Logan and Duffy. Reynolds and Durning have terrific chemistry together! They’re given a back story on how Duffy rescued Logan at the age of sixteen, as he was bouncing from foster home to foster home at that point. You feel that bond from the start and, when they’re tasked with an emotional twist, I actually cared about them and felt sorrow. Durning also provides quite a few laughs, as he plays his role as a detective who’s a child at heart (the first time we see him he’s playing hopscotch).
“Hard Time” does have it’s fair share of flaws. Logan has a love interest with his lawyer (who is so unmemorable I kept thinking she was a new character every time she appeared) that goes nowhere and the lawyer trying to put him behind bars is too weasely and has no bite (and is also forgettable). Reynolds doesn’t utilize these characters well, using them solely as pawns on a chess board. He also doesn’t take the audience for much intelligence wise, as he’s constantly flashing back to previous scenes from the film. Even with commercial breaks, I have a feeling the audience wouldn’t have forgotten what’s occurred. The biggest detriment is the last half. It’s not that the twists and turns don’t work. It’s that the film simply runs out of steam. Maybe that’s why I felt this was a pilot for a television show. It would have been better suited at an hour instead of ninety minutes.
Nonetheless, “Hard Time” is an enjoyable film. It’s a light detective fable with a splendid cast that pleases the sweet tooth. It’s not necessarily high quality or a game changer, but it’s a decent production. Which, for a TV movie, is akin to calling it “Citizen Kane”. At the very least, you’ll probably have more “fun” with this than the Orson Welles classic.
MVT: The relationship between Logan and Duffy. Reynolds and Durning work off of each other well and are amusing to watch. The fact that I want to see a television series with these two in the lead is telling of how much I liked them.
Make or Break: The scene where Logan pours his heart out, so to speak, to Leo Barker. That proved that Reynold’s wasn’t simply going for a cheap buck. He put some heart into the film and characters and I appreciated that. From here on out, that shined through.
Final Score: 6.5/10
Somewhere in Sudan, an American gun runner and con artist named Caine (Burt Reynolds) is stranded and looking for a way out of the port town he ended up in. Long story short, he eventually lands a job working out on a boat for a professor who specializes in marine biology, with hopes that he can steal the boat sooner than later and take it to who-knows-where. But when Caine is made aware of the fact that the professor is conspicuously searching for sunken treasure in shark infested waters, he uses intimidation to force himself into the situation, declaring himself a partner of the professor and insisting that he's entitled to half of whatever he finds. The professor's female assistant is thrown into the mix, double-crosses ensue, and at some point the characters find themselves underwater, face to face with man-eating sharks.
The behind the scenes stories of the film's troubled production are certainly much more interesting than the film itself. A stuntman was killed on camera by a shark, so the producers decided to exploit his death and capitalize on it by more or less promoting the tragedy as an attraction. Also, director Samuel Fuller lost the rights to the film, and the same producers decided to butcher Fuller's cut of the film in order to put more of a focus on the sharks and market it as some sort of "animal attack" movie rather than a thriller - even Fuller's original title of CAINE was nixed in favor of its current title. Fuller's subsequent requests to have his name removed from the film were denied. I'm not sure how Fuller's original version played out, but anyone who's seen the current cut of this film can probably attest to the fact that it's a fucking mess.
Hidden somewhere underneath the awful pacing, annoying score, etc., are a couple of memorable moments and lines of snappy dialogue, but for the most part there's not a whole lot to say about this movie. It's a sluggish film in which nothing really significant happens in the plot until over an hour in. In the time leading up to that, Burt Reynolds befriends a young cigar-smoking boy (Fuller's ode to himself?) who helps him con people, he has an affair with the professor's female assistant, there are a couple of really awkward-looking fight scenes, and we get some overlong underwater diving sequences. All of the characters are very bland, forgettable, and - especially in the case of Burt's character - unlikable.
MVT: I have to give it to the shark attack scenes. Despite the unfortunate and tragic events that took place while filming these scenes, it's rare - especially in this day and age when filmmaking is a lot safer and less barbaric - to see something as dangerous as an actor or stuntman tussling with a live shark.
