Despite Unevenness, The Hard Word Remains Fun
by Kristin Battestella
Writer Scott Roberts (K2) makes his directing debut with the 2002 Australian caper The Hard Word, and the prison basketball and gang release introduction is slow to start before we get to know our boys and their cranky orders at a seaside restaurant – full English breakfast with extras, simple tea and toast, refusing a soda because it's Coke not Pepsi. Their carefully planned heist with police uniforms, car washer decoys, and gas masks happens fast yet it's not very dynamic thanks to an uneven focus between the set up drama and the actual action. Our brothers intend to go straight now that they've had their release personally authorized by the paid off governor, but planted evidence and internal affairs investigations of that high corruption put them back in the big house. Already it's tough to tell if The Hard Word is about the crime or the comedy with turnabout circumstances, zany personalities, and backward Butcher Talk code. Fortunately, dramatic prison visitations are very well done as reflections on each side of the dividing glass accent the confrontations over who's screwing whom. The brothers stew inside while their lawyer strings them along, forcing them into another horse race heist before bemusing food poisoning delays. New bag men, hotel blueprints, and surveillance cameras lead to a bus full of bookies and humorously polite standoffs, but the boys have never messed up a job because they've never gotten so greedy. The Hard Word isn't as taut as it could be, leaving life on the inside for outside double crosses that aren't as fun as the prison quips. We know lawyer Robert Taylor (Longmire) is using our boys and stealing their cut, but the scenes beyond the brothers are simply less interesting. Violence is surprising when it happens – again because The Hard Word is bemusing one minute then a serious crime thriller the next. However, the irony of the dyslexic gunman getting the labels and numbers reversed and going, as the backward speaking brothers say, “apeshit” is a lot of fun. The Hard Word picks up halfway thru with the brothers literally on the run carrying hefty bags of loot. Although this is again played a bit too serious when it could be all out humorous, hiding the stash at a cow exhibit makes up for the unevenness between the too broadly written bad cops and greedy betrayals. One wonders if the orchestrating bad guys were really needed at all when the bemusing crime gone wrong is entertaining as is, and The Hard Word loses momentum when it strays from its core with convoluted deals on top of more twists. We want to see our brothers win and enjoy the good life with butchering jokes and a B&B cottage serving sausage specials, but it's tough to retire to the country when there is always just one more heist.
If you've seen enough Down Under television, The Hard Word is an Australian who's who with Damien Richardson (Jack Irish) as the meat loving good brother Mal and Joel Edgerton (It Comes at Night) as Shane, the hot headed youngest nicknamed “Muscles.” Mal takes after their butcher father, content working in the prison kitchen, and the two years inside seems to have been happy with extra food and birthday parties. Shane works out in the gym when not summoned to therapy sessions over his aggression, and each brother has a woman fawn over him at some point – willing to break laws, breach ethics, or kill for our boys. Even our couple's names have a certain symmetry: Mal and Pamela, Shane and Jane, Dale and Carol. Mal falls for random getaway driver Kate Atkinson (Snowy River: The McGregor Saga) because she's a meteorologist who smells like Christmas dinner and according to him, he is a “meatierologist,” too. Therapy sessions reveal Shane's thrill of the heist as an escapism from the abuse of his mother and her female lover, and he romances therapist Rhonda Findleton (The Cooks), suckling her breast in a weirdly maternal yet steamy moment. Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under) as Dale's duplicitous wife Carol, on the other hand, wears white when feigning good girl but dresses in black when being bad, crafting her own angle to keep an eye on the money. Her brassy treachery gets Dale looking at the bigger crime picture while he's stuck on the inside, for Guy Pearce's (Memento) oldest brother is the smart one working in the prison library. At times, Pearce is unrecognizable thanks to the bad fake nose he sports as Dale. More like a bandage in the middle of his face, the nose doesn't really move, slightly hampering Pearce's subtle facial expressions. With his straggly hair pulled back in a ponytail, however, Dale slips into each heist disguise as needed. His strung out look reflects how this life of calculated crime has taken its toll on Dale, but our straight man amid the zany can't resist getting away with it – even if it means playing the long game.
When the camera accents the cleverness and crime realizations in the second half, The Hard Word feels like a different, dynamic film. Though obviously dated now, the low end, tacky fashions and older cars match the criminal downtrodden, and it's nice to see concocted plans that don't rely on smartphones or technology. The not bad but uneven music, however, accentuates the meandering direction; overplaying the serious heist ominous or coming on strong with a quirky swanky wink. Fortunately, the DVD director's commentary explains how being short on time with problematic logistics necessitated writing cuts that turned the film's focus on how the brothers do it rather than explaining the heists. Roberts admits that script issues were left to the actors to craft in scene or changed with editing multiple takes, filling in the wither tos and why fors of The Hard Word and what worked – or didn't. Overall The Hard Word plays as a serious caper when the character personalities dictate the picture should have been a comedy. The offbeat Australian style is part of the entertainment and repeat watching is necessary for the best parts despite the uneven tone. I can't lie, pausing to read the backward Butcher Talk subtitles is pretty fun! If you think too much about the long con or the logistics of the crime, The Hard Word won't make much sense, but the quirky characterizations make for an bemusing late night heist.
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