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The Hardcore Life

6.7

2,216

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Original title

Hardcoreaka

AKA

The Hardcore Life

Year

1979

Running time

109 min.

Country

United States

Director

Paul Schrader

Screenwriter

Paul Schrader

Cast

Music

Jack Nitzsche

Cinematography

Michael Chapman

Producer

A-Team, Columbia Pictures

Genre

Drama | Kidnapping Film / Disappearance. Sexuality & Porn

Synopsis

Jake Van Dorn is businessman from American heartland who shares strong Calvinist convictions with most of his countrymen. His teenage daughter is missing from the trip in L.A. and Van Dorn hires private investigator. Result of the investigation is his daughter being spotted in cheap X-rated movie. Van Dorn decides to bring her back personally and during the quest he becomes familiar with the pornographic underworld.

Awards: 1979: Berlin Film Festival: Official Selection

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Critics' reviews

"Schrader doesn't speak to the deeper and more human themes he's introduced. Too bad. But 'Hardcore', flawed and uneven, contains moments of pure revelation. (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"

Roger Ebert: rogerebert.com
"Schrader's second feature, 'Hardcore', is more confidently made than his first, 'Blue Collar', but it slips into a similar category: absorbing but unsatisfying."

Gary Arnold: The Washington Post
"Whatever its flaws, this is one of very few American films to deal with fundamentalist beliefs about predestination, faith, and sin with empathy and intellectual acuity"

TV Guide
"It's a detached, opaque, affectionless movie; since it doesn't regard the young prostitutes as human, there's no horror in their dehumanization--only frigid sensationalism."

Pauline Kael: The New Yorker
"Schrader doesn't seem capable of the perversely rhapsodic style his subject demands. But he does work with speed and intelligence, paying sharp attention to detail"

Janet Maslin: The New York Times
"The easily shocked may want an expose, or more a condemnation. The more sophisticated may grow tired of Scott’s morality. But shocked, cynical or dissatisfied, nobody’s going to be bored."

Variety Staff: Variety

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User history

The Hardcore Life

1979

Paul Schrader

6.7

(2,216)