#112: Hardcore
Release Date: February 9th, 1979
Format: Streaming (Tubi)
Written by: Paul Schrader
Directed by: Paul Schrader
3 Stars
Paul Schrader’s Hardcore is a movie of distinct strengths and distinct weaknesses. His resume as a writer speaks for itself (Schrader once joked that he already knows his tombstone will read, “Loving Father, Husband, Writer of Taxi Driver”), but I’m not sure I like the script for Hardcore. I think it mostly doesn’t work.
The story follows Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott), a late middle-aged midwesterner, on a quest to find his teenage daughter, who went missing while on a trip to California with their Calvinist church youth group. Jake hires a sleazy Los Angeles P.I. (Peter Boyle) to help locate her, and it doesn’t take long for the investigator to discover that Jake’s daughter has entered the world of hardcore pornography. In a now infamously meme’able scene, Jake is forced to sit in an empty adult theater and watch an 8mm porno to confirm that one of the performers is in fact his daughter. Jake can barely contain his rage, and angrily screams out at the movie screen. Now over 40 years later, any wiseguy on the internet can take that clip, replace the porn with whatever video they want, keep the George C. Scott reactions, and violá, comedy. I think I’m going to make one for the 2024 Mariners season. I need a clip of Mitch Garver looking at strike three while George C. Scott winces and screams, “Turn it off! Turn it off!”
Anyway, back to the review. Schrader’s script mostly works in regards to Jake and his struggle to navigate the world of sexuality and pornography. It’s an interesting conflict, this deeply conservative man prowling the red light districts of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. As he learns how dehumanizing and fractured the world of pornography is, and the trail goes cold, his obsession only grows more. Jake begins meeting with pornographers, visiting sets, and staging his own fake rehearsals for a porno in hopes of encountering one of the actors from the 8mm that haunts his mind.
I say the script only mostly works in this aspect because there really is no temptation for Jake in this world. Not for one second did I believe Jake wanted to have sex or was turned on by anything he saw in his amateur snooping. I imagine Schrader wanted to emphasize his deep Calvinistic convictions, but as narrative, Jake becomes this shark that only swims forward. Jake doesn’t question his religious beliefs, and his objective is singular: find my daughter. This narrows the character considerably. His convictions are never on the negotiating table in the story. Jake is all in on his Calvinist faith, no matter the hand he is dealt. Beyond seeing lots of sex and appreciating his daughter more, Jake doesn’t change much by the end of the movie.
It’s clear from Taxi Driver and Hardcore that Schrader has a fascination with lurid sex and has a bit of a savior complex. Hardcore is somewhat based in Schrader’s upbringing in a Calvinist church, and it seems his films are a way for him to intellectually dip his toes into the forbidden world of sex. Although Jake, and Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, are disgusted by the world of commercialized sex, they don’t change much after living in those worlds. Schrader seems to use the characters as a vessel for himself, to explore those worlds and see all of the dirty things, but ultimately retreat to a fortress of belief.
At the very least the character of Jake is intellectually interesting. The same cannot be said for his daughter. This is where the Schrader script really fails. At the end of the film Jake finds her, and we get an undercooked explanation for what happened. She was mad, I guess. She didn’t feel appreciated, so she ran away.
It doesn’t make any sense, really. Or at least the character is so underdeveloped that this particular reason doesn’t make sense. The ending is underwhelming.
A better ending would be something akin to the 1988 Dutch movie, The Vanishing, about a man who loses his wife at a rest stop in France while on holiday. That movie is also about obsession and loss, but is able to stick the landing and stay true to its own internal logic and ethos.
Hardcore wants to swim, but doesn’t want to get wet. And at the end, we learn that it kind of just wants to sit by the pool, leer at the girls in bikinis, and go to church in the morning.
Postscript: I love a flawed movie. There’s something beautiful about a movie that doesn’t quite work. Hardcore is definitely one of those. At the very least watch it for the on-location shooting in downtown LA. Seeing George C. Scott walk filthy LA streets in a polyester shirt, talking to prostitutes, is a stunning visual. Man, major cities in the late ‘70s were fascinating and disgusting.
