The Hard Word (2002)

Brief: Dale (Guy Pearce), Mal (Damien Richardson), and Shane (Joel Edgerton) are fraternal bank robbers who just got out of jail. Thrown back in to divert suspicion from their latest heist, Frank (Robert Taylor), their partner and lawyer, offers to get them out in exchange for pulling off their biggest hit yet. When Dale realizes that his wife, Carol (Rachel Griffiths), is having an affair with Frank, the brothers suspect there is a lot more going on than they originally knew.

If that was the blurb for the back of the movie, I would have ended it with, "But is it more than they can handle?"

It's a good thing I don't have to write the blurb, though, since I would have been tempted to begin it with, "In this dialogue less wasteland of a movie . . . "

Well, it's not that bad. And a case could be made that I'm rather partial to dialogue in movies, so I may judge movies that I feel lack it more harshly (e.g. my feelings about The Bourne Supremacy).

But that's the thing about dialogue in movies. It's great in two completely different ways. A) Because the writer thinks about each word carefully (or at least s/he should), the characters either deliver the kind of speeches we wish we could if we meted out our words with greater consideration towards their meanings or B) they say exactly what we think we would say in the given situation, which makes us feel close to the character. In either case, I like dialogue.

So when I don't get a lot of it or I get a bunch of random stuff that has nothing to do with anything (Shane's strange relationship with his mom, for example), I don't appreciate it.

Also, what's the deal with Pearce? Sometimes he's sexy, sometimes he's creepy, sometimes he's a little of both. That's the kind of thing I love about him. But occasionally, he's kind of simian. I don't know what that's about.

The trailer made a big deal about the music in the movie as well, and it wasn't particularily good either.

Basically, Scott Roberts (writer/director) doesn't really give us something worth watching. A good heist flick is judged by its pacing as much as any other standard. I kept watching, thinking, "It'll pick up soon, it'll pick up soon."

It never did. C-