The Hard Word

The Hard Word (2002) directed by Scott Roberts is a an Australian heist movie starring Guy Pearce as Dale, Damien Richardson as Mal and Joel Edgerton as Shane, the three Twentyman brothers. When the movie starts the three brothers are in jail. The warden, their crooked lawyer, Frank (Robert Taylor) and the police are working together so every once in a while the brothers are let out to rob a bank, or a bookie, or whatever target seems suitable.

To make things a little more complicated Dale’s wife Carol (Rachel Griffiths) is cheating on Dale with Frank. Carol comes across as a misguided gold digger, but with a severly shrewd bent.

Okay, so first of all – I really like the idea of an Australian heist movie. It’s got a different look and feel from the American ones, and that comes across really well. Sydney and Melbourne are the main locations, apart from the prison. The dynamic between the brothers is played well, with each of them true to their specific attributes.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Guy Pearce look scruffier, and it works really well.

The action is also works well to a certain point. It’s a pretty classic escalation with the three brothers caught in a situation they can’t get themselves out of. The jobs get progressively bigger, hunting that ‘big score’ that’s going to let them retire.

Dale’s treacherous wife and their crooked Frank the crooker lawyer are in no way lovable, but the quality of the acting makes their interaction at least understandable.

The brothers are sympathetic though, all the way through. The reason they’re allowed to continue their activities is basically because they’re good at what they do and no one gets hurt when they rob people. The last big score is one of those things, though, that requires more people and takes place outside their normal zone of operations and it does, predictably, go wrong.

I’m not going to give away the ending, save to say that this is one of those movies that actually ends twice.

The brothers lose their money, they get ripped off by Frank (and to some extent Carol) and that’s where all this could have ended. It doesn’t though. And that’s too bad.

I get the feeling that we like the Twentyman brothers a little too much to leave them high and dry, so there is a happy ending, after a fashion. But it feels more like an afterthought than a planned ending, if you catch my drift.

The strong points are basically the characterizations and the fact that you get the sense that these are actual people rather than stereotypes. There’s not a lot of hard talk without any follow up and there are a million little details that are really great – like the fact that one of the brothers gets food poisoning from sausages cooked special for him on his birthday in prison, and because of that they almost miss the big job in Melbourne. It’s just one of those stupid things that could happen and that adds a sense of reality to a movie like this one.

I’d recommend it for that alone. It manages to give a unique feel to a movie that could have been terribly trite and tiresome.

Mule