Hardcore Review
For his second film as writer/director, Paul_Schrader merged elements of his Midwestern Dutch Calvinist background, his cinephilia, and California post-'60s sexual decadence in the bleak drama Hardcore. Modeled -- like Taxi_Driver (1976) -- after John_Ford's seminal Western The_Searchers (1956), Hardcore's story of a pious father's search for his runaway daughter takes an intense George_C._Scott from his upstanding Michigan home through the sordid wilderness of the California porn world. Scott's revulsion is matched by the film's morbid fascination with the sex industry. Peter_Boyle's unsavory private investigator and Season_Hubley's strung-out hooker serve as compelling protectors and guides. True to the Ford antecedent, Scott's daughter resists her rescue, but the clumsily incongruous ending carries none of The_Searchers' or Taxi_Driver's expressive ambiguity. Even with its flaws, however, Hardcore's stolidly mournful, occasionally complex examination of a cultural dark side is almost everything Joel_Schumacher's ultra-sleazy porn odyssey 8MM (1999) wants to be but isn't. Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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