Hard Men (1996, Vincent Regan, Lee Ross, Ross Boatman, ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, Ken Campbell, Mirella D’Angelo) – Classic Movie Review 11,535

English gangster ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser.

Writer-director J K Amalou’s 1996 British crime gangster black comedy film Hard Men is an appalling British ‘homage’ to Quentin Tarantino, in which a vicious London gangland crime boss Pops Den (played by former real-life hard man “Mad” Frankie Fraser) orders two of his mobsters Speed (Lee Ross) and Bear (Ross Boatman) to rub out a third, Tone (Vincent Regan), who wants to quit the gang when he unexpectedly finds out that he is to be a dad.

Sorry to sound like Mary Whitehouse, but it is gratuitously ultra-violent, unfunny, unexciting and totally pathetic. In a technically inept movie, the acting is as dodgy as the script and direction. The denouement plays like something out of Monty Python: their TV parody of Sam Peckinpah’s bloodletting movies such as The Wild Bunch or the armless/ legless knight in Holy Grail.

The only hard thing about this is sitting through it, short as it is (86 minutes). However it was picked as part of 1996’s London Film Festival, and originally shown on 28 October 1996, so someone must like it. It would make a suitable support film for Crash (also 1996).

It was released in cinemas on 28 February 1997.

Hard Men is Reservoir Dregs!

English gangster ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser (13 December 1923 – 26 November 2014) spent 42 years of his 90 years in prison for numerous violent offences.

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,535

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/