Harsh Times

Crime, Drama, Thriller

Christian Bale	Jim Luther Davis
Freddy Rodríguez	Mike Alonzo
Armando Cantina	Little Old Man
Eva Longoria	Sylvia
Kenneth Choi	Fujimoto
Freddy Rodriguez
Terry Crews	Darrell
Emilio Rivera	Eddy
Tammy Trull	Marta
Robert Dahey	Korean Clerk
Samantha Esteban	Letty
Chaka Forman	Toussant
César García Gómez	Listo
Noel Gugliemi	Flaco
Sonia Iris Lozada	Gracie
Adriana Millan	Rita
Michael Monks	Agent Hollenbeck
Paul Renteria	Ranchero
Blue Mesquita	Leo
Armando Riesco	Alex
Barry Colvert	Polygraph Expert

Director	David Ayer
Producer	David Ayer; Christian Bale; Andrea Sperling
Writer	David Ayer

Bleak as its South Central Los Angeles setting, Harsh Times is like a suicidal vortex swallowing men who ought to know better but can't stop their self-destruction. Christian Bale stars as Jim Davis, a stressed-out, former Army Ranger who becomes a very bad influence on his weak-willed buddy, Mike Alvarez (Freddy Rodriguez of Six Feet Under). Together the two meander through streets at night, getting drunk and stoned, finding trouble for its own sake and inviting danger as a ritual of machismo bonding. Mike's wife, Sylvia (Eva Longoria), a lawyer whom Mike, working as a telemarketer, put through school, is repelled by Jim and watches in pain as her spouse chooses a downward spiral over renewal and redemption with her. When Jim's application to join the L.A. police is turned down, he leads Mike into pure anarchy. An impractical change of fortune doesn't help any, and first-time director David Ayer, who wrote the screenplay for Harsh Times years before his script for Training Day, goes to some lengths, dramatically and visually, to convey Jim's unhinged condition. The dreariness of it all, and a sense that Bale has constructed--but not exactly lived in--another in his gallery of lost, misfit souls, makes it hard to connect with this film. Still, it is hard to turn away from these desperate and dangerous characters. --Tom Keogh