HARSH TIMES

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Menace To Society

A Bush Era Soldier Comes Home To Roost

By Cole Smithey.

Jim Davis (Christian Bale) is a tweaked-out discharged Army Ranger who returns from the Gulf War to his childhood South Central neighborhood in Los Angeles to stir up trouble with his best friend Mike (Freddy Rodriguez). "Harsh Times" is a devastating character study by writer/director David Ayer (writer on "Training Day").

Jim’s plans to marry his Mexican peasant girlfriend Marta (Tammy Trull), and bring her across the border to the U.S., are eclipsed by his desire to join the LAPD. Fate throws Jim a curveball after he’s turned down to be a cop. Homeland Security offers him a job to work in Colombia as an anti-drug enforcer. This occurs even as Bale’s drugged-out character descends into a volatile madness that leaves a swath of destruction in its wake.

"Harsh Times" is a reflection on the disastrous effects of war on the soldiers that survive them and the potential danger they pose to everyone they come into contact with.

Since he was discovered by Steven Spielberg to play the young lead in "Empire of the Sun" (1987), Christian Bale’s broad acting range has expanded to a place that few actors achieve over a lifetime of work. He is a commanding force of nature carrying the full moral weight of his tormented characters like an isolated atom full of speeding electrons in anticipation of being split into a mushroom cloud. He was quoted in Spin magazine as saying, "An actor should never be larger than the film he's in."

When you watch him you can understand why he is so concerned with not overpowering the narrative atmosphere that he inhabits. As a movie star, Bale is a man of the world without peer. He could just as easily play James Bond as he could the next President of the United States, Mexico, or Russia.

The Gulf War robbed Jim Davis of his humanity, but he still feels phantom traces of his former innocence that evaporates whenever he attempts to communicate with people who knew him before the war. He has a gag reflex toward his innate personal nature. Jim’s friend Mike is attempting to marry above his social class with his attorney girlfriend Sylvia (Eva Longoria).

But when Jim comes crashing back into Mike’s life, Sylvia is painted as an obstacle blocking all aspects of liberty, loyalty, and brotherhood. Jim derails Mike from his promised mission of finding a job. Jim orchestrates phony job opportunities through fabricated phone messages designed to throw Sylvia off of their trail of drugging and drinking. The recording of a fake telephone message provides one of the film’s few humorous moments. A double standard at play is that Jim actively pursues his own employment opportunities while assigning Mike as a captive sidekick.

You could make a case that "Harsh Times" is essentially the same story as "Training Day," but there’s far less Hollywood fantasy here. Both are powerful morality plays that share more than a few elements in common with Abel Ferrara’s "Bad Lieutenant" and Martin Scorsese’s "Taxi Driver." The difference is that "Harsh Times" is a Bush era story that applies specifically to the ways that both Bush administrations repurposed the human wreckage they created.

After failing a urine test while applying for the Homeland Security job, Jim wins over his put-off would-be employers by admitting that he smoked some pot in a fit of rebellious frustration. As it turns out, this combination of twitchy angst and humble honesty is just what the elite government boys are looking for to represent the country’s overseas investments. Of course, Jim has been doing a good deal more than just smoking pot in an effort to block out the post war trauma that increasingly turns his charismatic personality toward reckless violent acts.

A stomach churning double climax ratchets up the third act ending to a nearly unbearable level of latent and realized brutality. Like the final act of "Taxi Driver," it is a shocking series of events that releases the drama’s built-up tension like a brain surgeon cutting into a constricted skull. It is necessarily bloody but, more importantly, it allows the audience to breathe again. We are left to wonder what future shocks await us outside of the cinema.

"Harsh Times' reminds us that the lasting effects of war reach across generations. No one who reads this review will live long enough to escape the hell America has wrecked in its latest wars. The Bush administration broke it, now every citizen of the world must pay for a very long time — some more than others.

Rated R. 115 mins.