SnoopyStyle Set during the great depression, Chaney (Charles Bronson) is a quiet drifter who joins fight manager Speed (James Coburn) in an underground no rules fights. They are joined by cut man Poe (Strother Martin). In New Orleans, Chaney has an affair with Lucy Simpson (Jill Ireland). They confront promoter Chick Gandil (Michael McGuire) and his unbeatable fight champ.The story is very bare bones. It is Walter Hill's directorial debut. The strong silent acting from Bronson works well as a solo act. He has difficulties developing chemistry with Coburn or Ireland. In the end, it is the fights that are so much fun. It is an early depiction of MMA where kicks are used. The boxing parts are still the old standard of pre-Rocky. However when kicks, head butting, and other things are added. The fights ascend to a whole other level.

Robert J. Maxwell It's the Great Depression in New Orleans. Bronson arrives on a freight train with six dollars. Coburn discovers that Bronson has a punch that would penetrate 20 millimeters of steel and they make a lot of cash together participating in pick up fights, sustained only by bets.The fights are brutal. Two shirtless men batter each other until one is insensible. Anything goes in these mano a mano and pata a pata. It's all bare-knuckled fighting, as in a grade-school playground. You can kick an opponent, pull his hair, strangle him, break his back, knee him in the jewels, or ram his head against the wall.Strother Martin is always there as the dope-addicted ex medical student to treat your wounds and bandage you up. But this is Hollywood, not New Orleans in 1935. There's hardly a drop of blood. These guys are real savages, remorseless, and the worst Bronson winds up with is a rather becoming bruise on his temple -- and that only after the climactic fight against the best bare-knuckle fighter in the country, imported, like the gunslinger in "Shane", from elsewhere.If the settings weren't drab enough, with their greenish walls and peeling chintz wallpaper, and the overhead fan that doesn't work, and the spare and spindly furniture, a very portrait of the abandoned railway car I live in, the fights themselves are depressing. As a nation we seem to be turning into a society of cage fighters and air guitar contests. That's for the American man. The American woman can go on afternoon television and sob out her story of sexual abuse as a child. And of course we can all sit back and enjoy American Idol. Man, does our system of values need the services of the failed medical student, Strother Martin. Does he know anything about treating blood poisoning? It isn't the exercise of physical skill that's repulsive. I envy athletes and dancers for being able to do with their bodies things that I could never command mine to do. Jill Ireland, Bronson's whorish sometimes girl friend in the movie, was trained as a ballerina and I admire her for it.It's the objective of the writers and producers that are so repugnant. They're playing to an audience that simply wants to see two behemoths batter each other to the ground. That's the ENTERTAINMENT. It's as if some group of MBAs at Columbia Pictures got together and had a bright idea. Instead of having a story of good and evil with a sprinkling of fist fights, why not make the whole movie about fist fights? The fights themselves follow all the conventions. Bronson's opponents rarely connect. Their round house punches miss by a mile with a great whoosh, while Bronson almost always connects with a sound of braking pottery.If it weren't for that pandering, the movie might be pretty good. Bronson hardly has any lines. He's silent and wears an inscrutable smile. But some of the secondary characters are interesting. Coburn's facial features have never been more mobile. Jill Ireland is appealingly winsome. And there aren't any real villains. The organization that provides Bronson with opponents are men of their word, in a way that Coburn, for instance, isn't. (He recklessly gambles away the debt he owes them.) The period detail has a few anachronisms but is convincing enough, as is the wardrobe. And the ending isn't what the formula demands. Ireland finds another man, more dependable than Bronson, and hooks up with him. And Bronson, who drifted into town in a box car, drifts away into the night.

Dave from Ottawa This great looking, rather downbeat slice-of-lowlife action picture shows us the grim, dusty Depression era in suitably unglamorous, bled out colors and starkly realistic sets. Everything seems faded, flaking paint, cracking, on the verge of breaking apart - much like America itself at the time. Charles Bronson drifts into New Orleans and joins the underground bare knuckle boxing scene. The laconic Bronson, who has about a hundred words of dialogue in the whole picture, hooks up with fight manager James Coburn, who talks about a hundred words a minute. The contrast between the two extends beyond the verbal - Coburn jangles about energetically, while Bronson is a study in stillness. No wasted motion, no baggage. You get the feeling he could tote his whole world around in one pocket. When Coburn tells him that he lost his fight contract gambling, Bronson looks at him and says one word: "Dumb." It's a stunning under-performance. Coburn is the rushing river and Bronson is a rock. Jill Ireland, Bronson's real-life wife and frequent co-star, appears as a pretty woman who wants more out of life than what the aging, drifting Bronson can offer. Their relationship and chemistry is wonderful, and sad as it quickly becomes obvious that whatever they might have together is temporary. Once again, as everything seems to in this picture, this resonates with the temporary and unstable nature that everything seemed to have during the Depression. It was a dark time, and the Depression colored everything around it, and the picture reflects this in all of its tiny details. Great period film-making, great dialogue and terrific performances all around.

MBunge Bronson. Coburn. Guys getting the snot beat out them. Strother Martin at his Strothery best. What more do you need to know?A stoic, 50something drifter named Chaney (Charles Bronson) hooks up with a fast talking inveterate gambler named Speed (James Coburn). Speed sets up the streetfights, Chaney knocks 'em down and they split the winnings. Things seem to be about as good as they ever got for anybody in 1930s America, but Speed can't stop from getting in over his head with loan sharks and Chaney finds himself caught up with a woman (Jill Ireland) who's got about as much warmth as a cold stove on the Canadian prairie. Eventually, the biggest gambler in New Orleans forces Chaney into one last fight with Speed's life on the line as well as every dime Chaney has, and it's not always clear which he cares about the most.To be perfectly blunt, there's not a lot going on in this Walter Hill production. The story's about as simple as "See Chaney. See Chaney fight that guy. Now see Chaney fight this other guy" and Hill's not exactly known for his strikingly imaginative direction. But sometimes simple can be good, like a grilled cheese sandwich. This tale of human weakness and ambition squeezed in the vise of the Depression is like a grilled cheese with just a little ketchup on the side.Obviously, Bronson is awesome. If aspiring young actors want to know if they have what it takes to be movie stars, they should watch this film and imagine themselves playing Chaney. Bronson spends most of the movie in taciturn silence, saying barely more than 3 words at a time to anyone except Jill Ireland, yet commands the audience's attention every second he's on screen.Not far behind is Coburn, who is able to put aside his own considerable machismo and play the rake to Bronson's rock. You could have cast Coburn in the role of Chaney and no one would have blinked, yet he's able to slide seamlessly into a character who's as intemperate and grasping as Chaney is cool and indifferent.Backing up such a dynamic duo are a slew of talented supporting players. Strother Martin brings his subversive Southern charm to the role of Poe, a junkie medical school drop out hired to tend to Chaney's wounds. Michael McGuire as the rich man who wants to own Chaney or break him has just the right sense of a man who's above it all but doesn't want to be. Robert Tessier and Nick Dimitri as Chaney's two top opponents are both great as guys who've always been the toughest one in the room but have been shaped by that in two different ways. Tessier's guy simply revels in his physical power while Dimitri's is drained of joy and has only the need to prove his dominance. Even Maggie Blye as Speed's woman adds her own dash of local color to events.For his part, Hill's best work is during the fight scenes. He does repeat certain sequences over and over, but he manages to establish a sense of ragged rhythm and flow. These scenes don't feel like choreographed dance numbers. They are flesh and reflexes and will power smashing into each other.Hard Times isn't a masterpiece. It does hold up quite well as, essentially, a completely serious version of Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way But Loose and remains more than worth watching.