The Hard Way [Blu-ray]

A truly fun time...I am a huge fan of the comedy/action genre and I have to say that this nails that genre at every turn. It moves at a good pace and let's the characters come out in a timely fashion. The situation, though far fetched, is still made quite believable by the actors with James Woods as standout as a grizzled cop with one eye on the villain and one eye on the new lady in his life.The supporting cast really says New York with every line spoken and I would go so far as to say that the city itself is a character which is the norm whenever a film is made there. LL Cool J does a credible job and is fun to watch in his first film role. Stephen Lang chews up the scenery as The Party Crasher with his usual mixture of evil and charismatic presence.If ya dig gun-paly, dig Michael J. Fox, dig a good time then throw this in your cart, you won't be disappointed.

ASIN#B014J55JZCIs Los Angeles the world capital of palm trees, power lunches and showbiz hype? Is New York a capital of culture loaded with wise guys, ethnic (ill-gotten) riches and the mean, sleazy streets?In The Hard Way, the moviemakers ram these two cliches together with a tongue-in-cheek vengeance. It’s a buddy-buddy movie in which the two main characters--a nail-hard Manhattan homicide cop (James Woods as John Moss) and a winsomely cute action-movie Hollywood superstar (Michael J. Fox as Nick Lang)--become symbols of their respective cities. In it, New York declares warfare on wimp-ridden L.A. and L.A. wins New York over with charm, guile and movie deals.Fox’s Lang and Woods’ Moss, thrown together because the actor is researching the cop for an upcoming movie, are the male-bonding equivalents of the Sylvester and Tweetybird. Their relationship is different, instead of being merely stylized, it's fraught with physical peril. Lang gets hurled head-over-heels out a barroom window; Moss goes flying down the street on a tow-truck’s swinging door. In between them are the love interest (Annabella Sciorra, The Sopranos) and the death interest: a grinning serial killer who calls himself the Party Crasher (Stephen Lang, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Avatar).It’s a big, blowzy, hard-racing, bright movie that comes at you a mile-a minute: hyperactive, packed to the brim, jabbering away like a speed freak. The movie's premise is that movie cops and real-life cops, like L.A. and N.Y., are oil and water--especially when one of them is used to car phones and poolside sushi (then novel) and the other favors a bat on the skull and street vendor hot dogs.The director, John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Blue Thunder and Nick of Time), knows how to handle this kind of big, pop entertainment, and he leaves reality behind quite early. He’s dealing less with impressions than with all the L.A.-N.Y. images sprayed onto the screen in two decades of action movies. His Hard Way is like a conventional, overdressed buddy-buddy cop movie, another Lethal Weapon or Running Scared, with the screening-room wisecracks built right into the script. (Lem Dobbs, well known for Blade Runner and Out of Sight, among others, co-wrote this.)The numerous "inside Hollywood" gags - everything from sequels and promos to Mel Gibson’s rump to Michael J. Fox’s height (the prime running gag in the movie), also point up its main incongruity: the fact that the fantasy land of L.A. seems so much realer than the Manhattan grit. A clever conceit executed flawlessly.Michael J. Fox as Lang is fleeing into the same sort of movie he’s trying to avoid, the kind with Roman numerals in the title--and the whole movie is a rumination on buddy-buddy scripts. The Party Crasher, who often seems like a frustrated screenwriter, composes all his murders on a computer, and at one point Lang bursts in on Moss and announces he knows what’s about to happen because they’ve just reached the “third act.” The characters even flee into one of Lang’s movies (a Raiders of the Lost Ark parody) and, before the end, they’ve gotten swallowed up in the marketing campaign too: all four of them clambering around a huge three-dimensional billboard with Lang’s face puffing smoke into the Times Square night. Keep in mind that this pre-dated the awful The Last Action Hero by several years.The Hard Way (rated R) is loud, brash, racy and, on its own shallow terms, very entertaining. Die-hard fans of buddy-cop movies will appreciate the often sarcastic dialogue, the garish over-the-top flamboyance with which Badham and the screenwriters hurl around all the cliches of the genre, from “Hill Street Blues” station-house clutter to the monstrous super-villain. Playing the maniacal Crasher, Stephen Lang has Rutger Hauer’s intensity and Ron Liebman’s wolfish smile; he’s a real scene-chewer.Some viewers might not dig the unrelenting, unmodulated tempo, the crash-bang cartoon simplifications and the silly way the tag-team of screenwriters drag in Moss’ romance and turn it into a triangle. Trapped between Woods and Fox, Annabella Sciorra’s Susan might as well be walking around wearing a sandwich board emblazoned “Obligatory Girlfriend” on one side and “Humanizing Element” on the other.But it’s Woods and Fox who are the movie’s core. They’re an interesting duo. Often they seem to be in the middle of an actor’s duel, pushing their roles naturally to the edge of caricature--and their best scene is a male-bonding homoerotic sendup staged in that manliest of manliest Manhattan bar, McSorley’s.Badham directs the dialogue as if he were trying to remake His Girl Friday or any number of thirties screwball comedies - the actors are constantly stepping on each others lines - adding to the furious pace.Woods uses his trademark bantering, live-wire intensity to extravagant satiric effect, jamming down hard on every phrase, letting his chin dart around like a skinny Mussolini. Fox counters by continually flickering his eyes around in those hurt, "aw shucks", boyish looks of his, biting his lip, letting eyes brush around the room, plaintively. (Lang/Fox, of course worships the "real McCoy" Woods.)Standing in for the Big Apple and La La-land, Woods dynamically plays the abrasive cynic to Fox’s comically pretentious, laid-back dilettante. They’re great together.Also features Delroy Lindo and Luis Guzman.TheGood sound and picture. Option English and Spanish subtitles. No extras.

i actually paid money to rent this because i love Michael J and Jimmy Woods--but Mike Fox is a whiny unlikable Hollywood brat and Jimmy W plays an equally unlikable a-hole......and these are our protagonists??the sets are cheap, like bad cop car props, awful shoot outs, "gangs" that look nothing like gangs. is this a comedy? is this action? it is neither.for a MUCH better mis-paired cop action/comedy i'd recommend the Wahlberg/Ferrell The Other Guys--that movie is dumb but it is actually FUNNY and some of the action is actually decent.The Hard Way is just boring, unlikable, the stakes are non-existent. oh and Jimmy Woods has a nagging female girlfriend-ish character the whole way.a thoroughly unenjoyable film that will leave you feeling, well, nothing. there is no point to this movie.

I can’t think of two actors I couldn’t care less about seeing in a buddy action comedy, than Jim Woods and Mike Fox. Now the truth. They do a good job together, in the sense that, you never care that they’re on screen, you’re just happy something is playing in the background; audio, sound effects, scripted conversation, overly dramatic expressions. Bang Bang Nick Lang! Ladies Love Cool James is also in this feature film. This is a movie and there was a healthy budget on this, with a young Christina Ricci and a creepy Stephen Lang with remarkable eye and mouth combo movements. Director John Badham has done some good work; War Games, Saturday Night Fever, Stakeout, Short Circuit and American Flyers. This isn’t up there. It’s on his resume and you can watch it if you’re a John Badham completist, if that’s important to you. I know it was important to me. Once. A long time ago, when Badham took over cable. Now, I have only the memories.

The Hard Way is a superbly exciting action/comedy movie that never got the recognition it deserves. James Woods and Michael J. Fox are terrific together and their antics are the best part about the movie. James Woods is one of my top favorite actors and he gives an electrifying performance, as always escpecially in the underappreciated The Specialist. The movie is loaded with laughs and exciting action scenes. Most of all the entire movie has an incredible high energy that is very rare. I literally get a rush everytime I watch it. I`ve always been a huge fan of The Hard Way. My only complaint is I wish Stephen Lang as the villain would have been played more serious and threatening through the whole movie like his incredible opening scene at the club. If you haven`t seen The Hard Way yet definitely pick it up or at least check it out. A lot of fun!

This was my introduction to James Woods. I was 11 years old when I rented the VHS tape (in brutal pan and scan) and it felt grown-up to watch Michael J. Fox in an adult comedy dropping F-bombs, but I remember being more taken aback by Woods' fast-talking verbosity and heart-warming arrogance, a trait that has become his trademark over the years. Strange how in the 28-ish years since my first viewing I remembered so many lines of dialogue. I can't think of any other movie that has had that effect on me.Fox plays Nick Lang, a Hollywood big-shot who is facing a crisis of confidence and desperately wants to shadow John Moss, a hard-bitten New York detective to research his potential next big movie. Moss is outraged by the idea, however his boss is a huge Nick Lang fan and forces them to work together to crack a case involving the maniacal "Party Crasher" (Stephen Lang, that name again, long before his iconic role in Avatar), a psycho assassin who is systematically wiping out drug dealers at night clubs across the city. As with John Badham's previous movie Stakeout, the tone alternates between dark and comedic without every fully committing to both, instead playing it safe in the middle while occasionally glancing in either direction.Fox and Woods have excellent chemistry, as their names would suggest, and the dialogue spars between them have perfect fluidity. Fox riffs on his naive but good-natured Marty McFly persona while Woods masks his self-loathing with hard-earned intellectual superiority over everyone else (the man has an IQ of 180, don't ya know). I do wish that the script could have been developed a bit more, alternating and reversing their roles as they imprint on each other and make each other better people. It's there, but as I said, they only superficially build on this.When I was a kid I had a huge crush on Christina Ricci and suffered the dreadful 1991 Addams Family movie just to see her. She has a small role here as the 10-year-old daughter of Moss's girlfriend who seems wise beyond her years, but she too is underused and not developed.Of all the buddy/cop movies that came out in this era The Hard Way seems to have fallen by the wayside in the shadow of Lethal Weapon and much lesser comedies such as Rush Hour. If only the script had been allowed to push just two steps further it could have been a legit classic, but is merely an amusing, if well-staged, action comedy with plenty of in-jokes and mild satire.John Badham, like John Carpenter, prefers his movies to be shot in anamorphic Panavision (the notable exception being Stakeout, ironically his best-looking film) and after suffering many years of horrible pan-and-scan home video releases The Hard Way is finally presented here on Blu-ray in 2.35:1 1080p with DTS HD-MA 2.0 sound. Shot by veteran cinematographer Donald P. McAlpine, famous for his iconic work on Predator, the movie looks slick and very high-key but there is some noticable print damage in the form of stress lines in some shots. Obviously, Universal did not master this from the OCN but it's still a decent-looking transfer nonetheless. There are no extras.

This movie is both very funny and action packed at just the right times. James Woods and Michael J. Fox provide an excellent partnership as they take it in turns to play the straight man. The bar scene where Fox attempts to sort out Woods' love life is priceless. Also the line 'From me to you' has become a catch phrase in our house.

Its a classic movie of the early 1990s . That's it .

This is a great film, performances by James Wood and MJ Fox both on top form, and this is an underrated film, maybe a hidden gem...The picture quality is just fine, there is grain present but i like that, the sound is Dts 2.0 ...well worth adding to your collection

Primarly bought this dvd because it's been years since I've seen this film. It's a great funny film. I love James Woods character. Nice collection for my dvd collection.I was worried upon seeing the DVD cover on Amazon as its in a foreign language but the actual DVD arrived wriiten in English.