Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Glad I ran into part of this movie on TV and enjoyed enough of what I saw to stop and get the entire movie to watch. It's a romp in that some segments are a bit cartoonish and comic in nature and the violence in it isn't anything emotionally jarring or tramautic.Fans of Pierce and Edgerton will probably watch this while going through their catalog of films and I think they won't be displeased although my favorite character was the sausage making good-natured and lovable 3rd brother Mal played by Damien Richardson.For those still skeptical, just give it a watch and see if it doesn't catch you in the first 20 or so minutes.

My only reason for watching this is because I caught the tail end of it on cable and saw the ending before I saw the re-run of the film starring GUY PEARCE, an actor whom I liked in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and MEMENTO. It's no more than an average crime caper movie but watchable enough to pass the time.It's one of those hard to define flicks about a trio of hoodlums (brothers, actually) who are exploited by a crooked lawyer and, in the end, decide to take revenge. That's the basic plot in a nutshell, with some equally corrupt cops thrown into the mix. But first time Aussie director Scott Roberts has taken some very far out material with lots of quirky potential and turned it into a fairly interesting heist film that moves swiftly toward a most unlikely ending. Along the way there are a lot of twists and turns--watch especially for the crucial scene where Pearce decides to take care of the corrupt lawyer all by himself until the unexpected happens.RACHEL GRIFFITHS is effectively cunning as Pearce's blonde and trashy wife, and JOEL EDGERTON has fun with his role as the wildest brother who is most brazen about his prison behavior with a counselor. A guy by the name of ROBERT TAYLOR is apparently unaware of his moniker's use by an already famous classic star.With a serious/comic flavor, it starts out promisingly but turns into an average thriller aided and abetted by an upbeat musical score.Warning: Lots of profanity, sexual doings and coarse lingo make it unacceptable for the kiddies. A major flaw are the heavy Australian accents which blur much of the dialog.

"The Hard Word" is your standard bloodbath-with-a-comic-flavor of the month. The fact that it comes from Australia only proves than Australian filmmakers are good at imitating American filmmakers who are good at imitating other American filmmakers who are good at.... But it has its share of amusing moments, and some appropriately edgy performances; Pearce and Griffiths have real chemistry on screen. I think **1/2 out of 4 is a pretty fair rating for this movie.

"The Hard Word" is a gritty, sexy, Australian take on the double-crossing heist movie. We get to hear Guy Pearce (long-haired and greasy) and Rachel Griffiths (blonde and wet) go native in their accents in an entertainingly original script by first-time director Scott Roberts. While not the first film to have quirky brothers-in-crime as the comfortable loyalty fulcrum, the familial psychological pathologies make for a nice counterpoint to the friends', foes', and femme fatale's twists and turns. There's more jokes and ironic humor than even the violence, which helps to block out some quizzical plot turns. The movie never tells us that the title is Ozzie slang, among other blunt phrases used throughout (such as the tendency of Ozzie blokes to affectionately call each other the "c" word). My Down Under friend Bronwyn translates (used with her permission): "In it's 'ultimate' usage it means to pressure someone for sex. If you were talking to a girlfriend who went out on a date with someone new, you might ask 'did he put the hard word on?' However, it is sometimes also used just in a general sense of exerting pressure. In fact, it was in a headline in our local suburban paper ("The Leader") yesterday: 'Minister puts the hard word on district pollies [politicians].' An article about the State Minister for Local Government pushing the local councils to sort out boundary reforms."