Very Cool!!!

Crappy film

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

You often hear stories about actors spending some time with the actual people who do the job that they're going to be portraying on screen. If a movie star is going to play a cop in a role, they might ride around with the police for a few days to get a sense of their traits and experiences. Well this comedy takes that concept to the extreme and plays it purely for laughs.Michael J.Fox plays an Hollywood,pampered movie star of Indiana Jones type action movies who is sick of been labelled as a family oriented actor and wants to play meatier roles. He plans on playing a cop in a gritty new film, and in order to do some research, he is teamed up with New York's angriest, most unsociable detective James Woods. But he's on the trail of a psychotic serial killer and doesn't intend to let Fox get in the way.The plot isn't important here. It's the hilarious banter and excellent chemistry between the two lead stars that makes the film so much fun, while director John Badham milks the concept for all it's worth. He plays around with the cop movie conventions and bites the hand that feeds him with lots of swipes at Hollywood, before the likes of Last Action Hero, Showtime, and Hollywood Homicide got in on the act.The production design is terrific throughout and is as good as you could hope for what is essentially just an action comedy. Badham clearly put a lot of thought into his locations. The New York city streets in the film are crowded, dirty, and gritty looking,to further contrast Fox's Beverley Hills lifestyle.The stunts are impressive, and as the film goes on, the action sequences become more and more over the top, which suits the film because it puts Fox and Woods into situations similar to Fox's character's movies. The mayhem climaxes with a fun homage to North By Northwest. A great action comedy,and Fox and Woods set this apart from the usual buddy cop movies from the 80's and 90's. Loved it.

At my house, our summers have of late tended to turn into extended Michael J Fox marathons; last summer it was Family Ties on Netflix, and this summer is shaping up to be the summer of his obscure comedies. My mom knows we love MJF, so while grocery shopping, she picked up a four-movie DVD she found on a clearance rack, and one of the movies happened to be The Hard Way. I only watched it because my little sister asked me to, and I even brought my phone in the room in case I got bored (because that's what happened when she made me watch Midnight Madness, another little-known Fox film, his first role, actually). However, I never picked up my phone once! The film started out strong, with our first glimpse at the "party crasher," played with manic and slightly terrifying believability by Stephen Lang, and a joke involving Shakespeare plays that immediately got me hooked. Stephen Lang wasn't the only good actor in this movie; surprisingly, the whole thing was earnestly acted and nobody really bordered on cheesy, like they do in most bad comedies from that era. Michael J Fox was endearing- as usual- as the naive movie star shadowing a cop for a role, and even when he had emotionally difficult scenes, he never came off as cheesy (like he occasionally did in Family Ties). And James Woods was especially great as the love-stricken, NYPD cop. I'm usually very picky when it comes to movies- especially comedies- but I enjoyed this. If you're a Fox fan, definitely don't miss it!

Buddy cop movies got a bad reputation coming out of the 1980s. It's not entirely undeserved because there were so many bad ones, but there were so many bad ones made because it's a formula that can be endlessly tweaked to produce some really entertaining flicks. There's no better example of that than The Hard Way, which switches around a few ingredients to create one of the better and funnier buddy cop duos you'll ever see. Sadly, that dynamic is undone by the extended, self-negating conclusion of this film. This is a story about "X" that becomes so completely "not X" at the end, it's hard to believe.Lieutenant John Moss (James Woods) is a New York City detective on the trail of an insane killer known as the Party Crasher (Stephen Lang). Moss is also one of the most seething, irritated men in the world, something that's not at all helped when movie star Nick Lang (Michael J. Fox) decides Moss is exactly the sort of example he needs to follow to land a coveted dramatic role. After he gets banged up while trying to apprehend the Party Crasher, Moss is assigned to shepherd Lang around town and show him what a real cop's life is like. Well, Moss decides he's not going to let this pampered Hollywood pretender get in the way of his investigation and Lang decides he's not going to let Moss barrage of indifference and rage keep him from getting the inspiration he needs. Throw in Moss' sort-of girlfriend (Anabella Sciorra) who finds Moss shutting her out, while his new "partner" is more like the kind of man she wants, and you've got the basics of The Hard Way.While director John Badham does a nice job creating the street life of New York on screen and Stephen Lang and Anabella Sciorra are very good in their by-the-numbers roles, there's no question that it's Woods and Fox who make this movie worth watching. Their scenes together are outstanding, with Woods playing up the rawness of reality as much as he can and Fox perfectly projecting the sheltered attitude and experience of the rich and famous. Making it even more enjoyable are how different facets of that relationship are suggested or referenced. On the one hand, Moss' closed off and solitary nature represents a sort of integrity against the prying, voracious culture embodied by Lang's attention. Lang essentially wants to steal parts of Moss' personality and existence for his own use and Moss bristles at that. On the other hand, Moss' refusal to let people into his life is also portrayed as a sort of selfish, self-destructive quality that pales in comparison to Lang's more open and expressive nature. For all of Lang's pretensions, he is in many ways a more functional human being than Moss. Combine that sort of nuance with the crackerjack performances of Woods and Fox and the first, say, two-thirds of The Hard Way is a very good film.Unfortunately, that last third founders very badly. The contrast between Moss' supposed real world and the fakeness of Hollywood is the animating concept of just about everything in The Hard Way. But Moss isn't a real cop and he doesn't live a real cop's life. It's a Hollywood version that is both sanitized and more exciting than the real thing. So, the story is built on a contrast that the filmmakers either can't or don't want to sustain. The result is this motion picture has three successive endings that are each more exaggerated and more Hollywood-like than the one before. It eventually concludes with Moss and Lang fighting the Party Crasher atop a giant recreation of Lang's head on a billboard over Times Square. It is a scene as over-the-top and ridiculous as any of the scenes from Nick Lang's movies that are mocked throughout this film.There's nothing all that wrong with the triple-ending of The Hard Way. It just clashes so starkly and severely with the tone and intention of the rest. Imagine Schindler's List ending with the "Springtime for Hitler" musical number from The Producers. And although Fox is great in his own right, the role of Nick Lang cries out for an actual 80s action hero to spoof his own image, instead of a comedic actor trying to create the same impression.The Hard Way is one of those motion pictures that just goes wrong and the more you love it at the start, the more disappointed you'll be at the finish. The good is good enough to make it work a look, as long as you don't let your hopes get too high.

"The Hard Way"I watched this movie when I was a child and haven't stopped loving it from the second i saw it. Not only Michael J. Fox being my favorite actor, but also the humor both Fox & James Woods bring to this movie. Apart from "Back to the Future" I think this is Michael J. Fox best movie out there.It's a story about an actor who wants to play a cop. In order for him to act as one he must work with one. So he decides to be the partner of a New York Cop (James Woods). All of this while a series killer, the "Party Crasher", is on the loose...If you wanna see a funny action movie go watch this. And don't expect an Oscar-winning performance. Just watch and enjoy