Hardcore (1979)

Paul Schrader’s brilliantly written “Taxi Driver” was crafted into a finely tuned sketch of American urban decay, alienation, the erosion of old morals, a world of dreams and aspirations colliding devastatingly with a world of exploitation and sleaze. Schrader again revisits the underside of society to structure his tale of moral corruption, this time with the focus on the late 70s and the sleazy streets infested by vermin, drugs and of course, the sex trade.

The movie begins in the deep Mid-West, where members of a Calvinist family celebrate Christmas in a very stiff and conservative way. The kids sit in on religious discussions rather than playing games or watching endless hours of TV. It’s a tightly knit community with the Calvinist Church uniting them in a close bond and old school Christian values rule. Everyone is white, and “outsiders” are seemingly an urban disease as yet. The Church plays a significant role in shaping the community’s morals, values, and environment in these parts.

George C. Scott’s daughter is sent off with a bunch of others on a bus for a church congregation, and weeks later, the news filters through that she has gone missing. Thus begins the journey of the sound, morally upright man of faith into the murky world of sleaze as he begins to trawl the streets in search of his daughter. He enlists a private eye to assist him (Peter Boyle), and soon it transpires that his daughter has been filmed in an 8mm “homemade” porn production. The detective takes Scott to a seedy fleapit porn theatre where he watches in horror the flickering images of his daughter in tacky porn shorts with some random men. The scene of his squirming away in his chair is a potent one, and George C. Scott is a capable enough actor to just about reign himself in without going too far over the top.

The film is set in the late 70s when an inevitable disillusionment was setting in with rising costs of oil driving prices ever higher and urban decay in larger cities playing havoc with law and order. The Sex trade had mainly been legalized and was flourishing in seedy pockets found in all major towns, and AIDS had not yet reared its ugly head to dent the hedonism which had turned into a lucrative and booming business.

Scott dives headlong into this world of Peep Shows and flickering, heaving bodies and is more and more repulsed and shocked by what he discovers. Later he fires his investigator and assumes the role of a porn producer/exhibitor, slowly learning the ropes as he places an ad in a “Screw” like magazine. Then he interviews prospective stars for his movie, including the rather charming “Big Black Dick”, who, in arguably the most fun part of an otherwise pretty dour movie, proclaims himself to be a 9inch superstar like no other.

Scott then teams up with a personable hooker (Season Hubley) in a Peep Show, and together they start to zero in on where his vanished daughter Kristen might be.

The film – already lacking any tension and relying heavily on what looks like voyeurism, draws to its flaccid climax and ends up as a botched moralistic thriller that fails to thrill. The film itself has a very dated feel and comes across as a rejected episode of Law & Order that was left on the cutting floor way back when the show began a century ago. Its morals by present standards are outdated. The film’s pace is slack, and an unfortunate amount of time is spent pandering to the worst Hollywood stereotypes, which is neither funny nor novel but just plain uninteresting. Expected from a bad episode of Kojak but not from a feature directed by the man who wrote “Taxi Driver”.

The film has no potency as an eye-opener to the world of sleaze and crime, nor is it particularly able to drive home its morals either. It has neither the grit and realism required to make a film like this work nor is it interesting enough in any other way. Most of all, it presents tired clichés and worn out stereotyped characters and situations that are neither shocking nor dramatically arresting. The film has little visual flair despite plenty of scope. The films palette and landscape are equally dull, and the camerawork is reminiscent of TV at its most mechanical. There is no anger, no pain, and pathos despite George C. Scott trying and occasionally even over-trying to portray his horror and disgust and helplessness at the sad world he views all around him.

George C. Scott is adequate, as is Season Hubley, but other than the pounding music score, there is little to remember about this movie other than how singularly dreary it is. Finally, the climax falls flat on its face rendering the viewer a little numb, sadly out of dullness rather than any questions or issues that a film of this kind should have posed. For a movie calling itself Hardcore about a challenging social topic, this was utterly softcore on all levels and thus totally misses the point. Taxi Driver is in another realm altogether.