Written and directed by Paul Schrader.
Jake VanDorn is a pillar of the community in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A devout man and a successful business owner, he’s used to getting his way (politely, passive-aggressively, like the Lord’s ultimately on his side ), and he’s similarly a leader within his family. They’re stout Calvinists, meaning they staunchly believe in predeterminism. Their paths have been laid out. Able to quote the Bible and with their walls full of Jesus paraphernalia, they’re ready for what lies ahead.
Jake’s daughter Kristen is ensconced in the Calvinist faith too, and she heads to California for a youth summit steeped in good ol’ religion. She never comes back, and months pass. Jake lives the agonized life of not knowing what happened to his beloved daughter until he gets a clue, only he might wish he hadn’t: she’s starring in bottom-of-the-barrel adult movies, doing all kinds of ungodly things. Distraught, but resolved, Jake heads to Los Angeles to bring his daughter back. He’s going to walk through Gomorrah.
With Hardcore, Paul Schrader torments a believer with suggestions that his faith is misplaced. How can Jake, a good, god-fearing man, see his world torn down like this? How can a person he raised within this same devoted faith sell their teenage body (and their soul along with it) for nickels?
It isn’t quite a modern retelling of the Book of Job, but the premise baits you with a crunching bit of soul-searching on the part of Jake, who must confront a society he believed to be over there, elsewhere, and easily dismissed, but which has now settled in his own home. There’s so much existential gravity here and we can already make out the depths to which Jake must descend to make sense of it all, yet it never really materializes.
Because Schrader gets tunnel vision. Jake’s trek through L.A.’s seedy streets is provocative and paved with flesh, by Schrader gets sidetracked laying it on thick and confronting Jake with the smut found in the back rooms of dirty video stores, massage parlors, and BDSM dungeons. It’s a bold move for a film only seven years removed from Deep Throat, the first porno to become a mainstream topic of discssion, and much of what Hardcore depicts lives up to its name. It just becomes more about shock than awe.
George C. Scott’s up for it, though. He channels Jake’s power while in his own world of Grand Rapids, and he masters the frustration of the impotence Jake feels once in L.A., like a fish out of water, cursing the sand for not being water. He has to do a lot here. There is a reckoning for Jake, but he also hatches harebrained schemes to explore L.A.’s underworld, and he must rumble through its streets like a low-rent action hero. Scott’s got the body of a bricklayer, and the shrewd eyes. He handles it all well.
For all the promise of its opening third, Hardcore veers quickly into B-movie caper, with ludicrous plots, spectacle chases and fights, some gore and explicit nudity, but none of the emotional exploration that we were led to believe would dominate and would have made for a far more gripping experience. It’s certainly never boring, but when you’ve already seen the dark heart at the center of Hardcore, you’re left unsatisfied with just its bare skin.
Mikkel Frederiksen 