Love the Hard Way 2003

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: [The story] is often overly simplistic when it is trying hardest for emotional complexity. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: [W]orth seeing mainly for Brody's electric performance ... Read more

Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune: A dark, uneven character study. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Loses tension (and ultimately credibility) as it wanders through three possible endings before grinding to a halt. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Heartfelt but fatally overwrought romantic melodrama. Read more

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: Packed with characters wallowing in self-conscious cool that's as tedious as their anomie. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: There must be some reason to worry over the fate of these people, but it's not in the movie. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: I figure Brody chose his own hip-jutting, fashion-runway postures, little realizing at the time that he was about to punch a big-time ticket out of this indie palookaville. Read more

Hazel-Dawn Dumpert, L.A. Weekly: The pair have little chemistry: Ayanna is a lovely girl with a sweet smile and a fine pout, but she simply can't match the soul shining from Brody's big brown windows. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: The movie is of the sort that relies exclusively on charm and charisma. Love the Hard Way has neither. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Full of bad dialogue, cheap locations, unbelievable situations and a lot of characters who have clearly spent too much time watching B-movies. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Desperately overblown 2001 melodrama. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: As character studies of Jack and Claire, it is daring and inventive, and worthy of comparison with the films of a French master of criminal psychology like Jean-Pierre Melville. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: [Brody] can be proud of his work here, and the movie is better than just a pre-stardom curiosity. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Read more

Laura Sinagra, Village Voice: If this adaptation of Chinese punk-lit writer Wang Shuo's fiction doesn't survive its Bronx trick-out, you can't really blame Brody, whose luminous autodidact seems caught between camp and coolsville. Read more