It's an amazing performance, one of the best of the year, with Bale truly making you believe in this over-the-top character.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

Harsh Times wins in the end by keeping its fingers wrapped tightly around its viewers' throats.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 25, 2006

Harsh Times is an hour-by-hour diary of two crazy, unreliable, irresponsible dudes trying to find a way to fit into the same society they hate, facing one hurdle after another until they appear to butcher half of Los Angeles.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2006

On the one hand, this grinding interpersonal week-in-the-life thriller is an energetic kick in the face, a no-holds-barred pulp fiction reveling in personal demons, muddy self destruction and the kinetic vitriol of doing things not remotely good for you.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 13, 2006

Jim is such a psycho and Mike is such a patsy, we don't care about these guys. We've seen dozens of more interesting head cases in dozens of smarter films.

Full Review | Nov 13, 2006

| Original Score: D | Nov 11, 2006

Harsh Times is so into its own nihilism, it sometimes forgets the humanity beneath the hurt.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 10, 2006

Ayer makes his directing debut with Harsh Times, which is so relentlessly grim that it occasionally goes over the top and invites derision.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 10, 2006

For a neophyte director, Ayer displays a lot of style.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 10, 2006

...As well-written and acted as Harsh Times may be, you will be relieved when the adrenaline returns to an acceptable level.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 10, 2006

The film builds to a melodramatic finale that would like to make you weep, but by then it has worn out your patience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 10, 2006

Ayer's writing is loaded with wit and malice.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 10, 2006

Though Bale has the presence of a young De Niro, and the same volatile edge, he's being asked here to fill out a role that doesn't ring true on any level.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 10, 2006

Ayer romanticizes a certain type of true-grit persona and relies on actors tough enough to pull it off.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 10, 2006

The slang, the modes of dress, even the styles of fighting all have a high degree of specificity that lifts the movie above most urban crime dramas.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2006

It's an ugly, brutal picture, and it's not about 'times' but rather timeless macho posturing run amok.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 10, 2006

Harsh Times opens with a deadly nightmare and ends with a vast bloodbath - in between, things get a little gruesome.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 10, 2006

...The movie consists of waiting for what you know is going to come. Waiting some more. And then waiting some more.

| Original Score: C- | Nov 10, 2006

This is a powerful film that combines a number of 'what if' situations with some true tragic moments and even a number of oddly funny situations.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 10, 2006

...If the movie is a comment on the dire straits of our returning soldiers, it's unconvincing.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 10, 2006