[5]
Michael J. Fox and James Woods star in this middling action-comedy from director John Badham (Short Circuit, Wargames). Fox plays a famous actor researching a new cop role by shadowing Woods’s character, a cranky but cool New York cop. Woods hates Hollywood and everything Fox’s character represents, but he’s forced to let Fox tag along with him for a while. As Fox collects his research, he helps Woods open up to a new potential girlfriend (Annabella Sciorra) while trying to track down a serial killer known as ‘The Party Crasher’ (Avatar‘s Stephen Lang).
The Hard Way features two good performances from Fox and Woods, even if the two never achieve a compelling chemistry together. The screenplay, however, is too muddled and disjointed to coalesce into anything memorable or meaningful. The serial killer and girlfriend subplots never feel germane to the story, and the film wears out its welcome by at least a half-hour. Fox and Woods have their moments, though — especially when Fox forces Woods to pretend he’s Sciorra to practice an intimate conversation. The finale atop a large animatronic movie billboard is striking, and Arthur B. Rubinstein delivers a distinctive score incorporating funk and rock elements.
With Delroy Lindo, Luis Guzman, Penny Marshall, LL Cool J, and a young, pre-Addams Family Christina Ricci.