Hard Times (1975) on Netflix
In 1933 Louisiana, Chaney, a drifter, wins an illegal bare-knuckle fight and teams with Speed, a fast-talking promoter. Speed borrows from New Orleans mobsters to set up Chaney's bouts.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/1014,834 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Chaney freighthops through Louisiana in 1933. At a bare-knuckled street fight where bets change hands, he watches the fighter backed by Speed, a cocky hustler, lose badly. Chaney persuades a doubtful Speed to let him face the winner, wagers his last six dollars on himself, and wins quickly. The two travel to New Orleans, where Speed sets up bouts against local fighters at long odds, and they recruit Poe, a genteel drug addict, as a cutman. Between fights Chaney takes up with Lucy Simpson, a woman down on her luck. Staging the bouts costs money, so Speed borrows from a gang of mobsters.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hard Times (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Walter Hill originally wrote Hard Times for a younger actor such as Jan Michael Vincent and wanted Warren Oates in Coburn's role; after a couple of actors turned it down the script went to Charles Bronson, whom Hill thought "too old", and Bronson wanted to meet Hill to see if he measured up.
- Walter Hill never made another film with Charles Bronson after Hard Times: "We had kind of a falling out over the film," the director said, because Bronson thought he had been too draconian in editing the scenes of Bronson's wife, Jill Ireland.
- Walter Hill remembered Charles Bronson being in remarkable physical condition at about 52, but as a smoker he had little stamina and could not fight much longer than 30 or 40 seconds; Hill later said Bronson received "very close to a million" dollars for the role.
- Walter Hill said the bare-knuckle fights were "dances" and that is why there was no blood: he believed that as soon as blood was added the fights would have become so real that they lost their dramatic truth.
- The original cut of the film ran around two hours; when it was cut down to about 90 minutes several fight scenes were deleted, and some of those lost fights survive only in production stills.
- Walter Hill says the script incorporated elements of an earlier Western he had written, Lloyd Williams and his Brother, and that he wrote it in a style inspired by Alexander Jacobs: "extremely spare, almost Haiku style. Both stage directions and dialogue."
