Some independent movies are like children to me. I know that sounds strange but it's true. I see them, struggling with their meager little budget, to tell a story and convey a message and all the hard work and dedication and effort on display in the film beats the hell out of some big time Hollywood productions made with ten times the budget but with no heart at all. So when I see one of these little films and it has a greatness that shines through its flaws I'm proud of it, and I want to jump around on the rooftops and tell everyone I know to buy it and see it. "Hard" is just such a movie. I see its flaws, believe me, and I found myself yelling at the screen more than once during the course of the film, taking the cast and crew to task for its glaring missteps, but something beneath the surface speaks of passion and greatness and a love for filmmaking that manage to overwhelm anything negative and make me want to watch the movie over and over again.

This is a pattern that is repeated throughout the rest of the film. Whatever uneven moments Malcolm Moorman may have in his performance, his screen presence and charisma are undeniably powerful. He manages to be both repulsive and alluring, and whenever he is stalking one of his victims the sense of fear is palpable. It's the kind of adrenaline inducing good performance where you find yourself screaming at the victims to run away before it's too late (why don't they ever listen to us?) The lead actor, Noel Palomaria, while his hair doesn't move and his line delivery is often stiff as though he were a telemarketer reading a script on his first day on the job manages to be sympathetic somehow in spite of his shortcomings, and by the end of the movie he seems to have relaxed a bit and his performance improves by leaps and bounds. The actor who plays his partner (the seasoned veteran detective), Charles Lanyer, is capable and believable in his performance. He's a hard ass at first (the movie begins with Palomaria on his first day as Lanyer's partner) but as the movie progresses he warms up to his partner and sticks his neck out to help when things start getting nasty.

And nasty is the perfect word for the events that unfold. Moorman seems to have the superhuman power to manipulate everyone around him and he's so slimy it's sometimes uncomfortable to watch (particularly when he manipulates a young boy who can't be older than ten years old...we now that he's going to rape the boy and even though it's not shown, it's implied in such a way that it's still disturbing; a fact which impressed me greatly). Though the graphic murders are never shown the aftermath of the murders is gruesome, and along with the scenes of Moorman taunting his victims there is one scene of him torturing a victim that is mesmerizing. The film carries a not-so-subtle message that gay police officers often face great difficulties on the force, and while the scenes of his fellow detectives harassing him are a little too heavy handed to be as effective as they could have been, Palomaria's reactions to the harassment are sufficiently moving enough to make the scenes work.

In fact, some of the scenes that might at times appear to be far too obvious (such as some of the police officers and the coroner making comments that the world is better off without the young gay men that Moorman's character slaughters) are in fact quite accurate to how a lot of officers feel about the subject (I've heard officers make such comments to my face in the past, so while it may seem like the movie is overstating the issue, the scenes ring true to me). That is indeed one of the strongest points of the movie, its treatment of the question of whether some lives are worth less than others; whether some victims are expendable. The question is powerful and while a little more finesse would have made the movie more capable of driving home the point without drilling it into the viewer's head, the heavy-handedness doesn't totally discount the message.

It's amateur night at the acting pool, kids. Some of the performances on display are simply atrocious. For every Andy (Michael Waite in a superb performance) there is a terrible actor like the one who plays Andy's son, or the one who plays Palomaria's on-again off-again boyfriend. I really wanted to like these characters but I found myself wanting to drive a railroad spike through my head while trying to watch the actors onscreen. It doesn't help that some of the actors are so good that these terrible performances stick out even WORSE than they would otherwise. And I know that characters in horror movies often make stupid mistakes that help further the plot, but sweet Jesus are these cops dumb. They make some of the stupidest moves I have ever seen in a movie, and at times I wanted to throw things at the screen in disgust. If you and your partner are parked under a bridge waiting for a killer to appear and garbage bags start mysteriously falling from above, how long would it take you to figure out that the killer is on the bridge? Because it took these cops five minutes, I kid you not. That is stretching my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point (and mixing my metaphors into incomprehensible mush).

That's just one example; there are plenty more. A little more subtlety and a few script revisions would have served the movie well. And there is one very confusing aspect that puzzled me until I figured it out about an hour into the movie: one of the cops on the force makes comments like "no woman knows how to suck my dick like a fag, you boys ought to try it sometime and see what I mean," and I honestly thought he was supposed to be gay, which made Palomaria's angst over "coming out" impossible to understand (I didn't know why the subject bothered him, since the other cops seemed fine with that gay guy). It really took me until the movie was more than half over before I figured out that the guy was mocking homosexuals and he wasn't supposed to BE one (another casualty of amateur actor's night; another actor could perhaps have made it clearer that he was supposed to be sarcastic and mocking, not ACTUALLY gay...I get the feeling that the ACTOR might be gay, with his lisp and obviously effeminate presence, but that shouldn't matter; actors are supposed to ACT and he should be able to PLAY a straight man without this many problems).

Don't let the grainy quality of the film or the often terrible acting or the convenient plot elements fool you; this is a movie made by people who were obviously overjoyed to be making a movie, and their enthusiasm shows in every frame. I learned by watching the special features that the movie was financed with several credit cards and that all the actors, technical advisors, and other crew donated their time because they believed in the movie so much. That's what I'm talking about people; filmmakers who want so badly to make a film that they endure indie filmmaking hell for FREE just to get a movie made. I SWEAR that kind of dedication covers a multitude of sins, as the whole turns out better than the sum of its parts. I grow so tired of overproduced mainstream movie garbage that looks pretty onscreen but is totally forgotten five seconds after I walk out of the theater that with a movie like this, where the good aspects are still sticking in my mind now, outweighing all the bad and making me want to watch again just to see them, I'm reminded again that these are the moments I'm proud to be a movie fan. So see this movie, laugh and throw things at the screen if you must, but whatever you do, don't dismiss it offhand. There are plenty of gems in this puddle of mud.

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