~ Christian Bale is doing wonders ~. Review on Harsh Times Movie

Dir: David Ayer

Cast: Christian Bale, Freddy Rodriguez, Eva Longoria, Tammy Trull.

Dynamite director David Ayer delivers a riveting drama laced with stoned humour and hardcore violence in equal measures. Its star Christian Bale has come along way from playing the kid wearing shorts in Spielberg’s Empire Of The Sun. Stand-out turns in American Psycho, Batman Begins and The Machinist have launched him into the acting big leagues and, for my money, right now no other British actor can touch him.

Bale cuts loose in this tale of an unstable Iraq war vet who's back on Civvy Street looking for kicks. Freddy Rodriguez plays Mike, a nice guy easily led astray by his childhood pal. Instead of finding work, the pair find trouble - not to mention a 9mm gun. The pals' efforts to offload the piece form one plot strand. Another involves Jim being offered a shadowy job by the Department of Homeland Security. Jim’s got problems.

The Gulf War left him a psychotic mess. He’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, skint and desperate to marry his Mexican squeeze Marta (Tammy Trull). After failing a psychiatric exam applying for the LAPD, Jim hits the streets, drinking, smoking up and lashing out at everyone around him. When he unexpectedly receives a phone call from Homeland Security inviting him to an interview, things seem to be looking up for Jim but he finds it difficult to get his life on track. Likewise, Mike is trying to get on the straight and narrow with his girlfriend, Desperate Housewives’ Eva Longoria, and find a job.

But Jim is a bad influence and the two spend most of their time getting wasted. The plot thickens when the government offers Jim a special ops assignment and his life is turned upside down. The government recognises the violence that brims so close to the surface of Jim’s psyche is about to erupt and want to tap that fury for its own devices. Jim begins to lose the ability to distinguish the harsh streets of LA from the battlegrounds of the Middle East, with deadly consequences. For all it's anger and alienation, Harsh Times often feels like a black comedy. Indeed, watching Christian Bale behave badly offers some guilty thrills. Well, for the first two-thirds of David Ayer's film, anyway. After that, things become unbalanced in every sense.

The road to self-destruction seems to stretch on for miles with a resolution hinges on a too-convenient coincidence. Nonehteless, Bale clocks up some of his best work this side of American Psycho. Like his script for the explosive 2001 cop drama Training Day (which has a narrative structure so similar that Harsh Times feels like a grainier photocopy), David Ayer's powerful, rough-hewn directorial debut makes you quiver in fear of those holding the badges. "Heck, we're all a little goofy here," chortles the Homeland Security recruitment officer.

But if scriptwise it's the same old Rambo post-war tragedy, Bale's performance as a tormented, dead-eyed casualty of war makes the crescendo more nerve-wracking than a .35 to the back of the neck. It is a topical look at what happens when traumatised soldiers are sent home.

The dialogue veers from Cheech & Chong (“I’m wasted, dude”) to Travis Bickle (“Are you looking at me?”) in Taxi Driver and I loved it. Bale doesn’t just explode on to the screen, he erupts like a volcano. His transformations and physical commitments are turning him into the male Meryl Streep. Here's he adopted a dis-quieting, deep, back-of-the-throat Los Angeles barrio accent.

It’s great to watch and undoubtedly a cult classic in the making. A must-see.