GEORGE C. SCOTT IN 'HARDCORE' PETER BOYLE & SEASON HUBLEY

Title: HARDCORE Year: 1979 Rating: ****1/2

George C. Scott plays a straight-laced, Midwestern business-owner with an innocent daughter who, on a church trip from hometown Grand Rapids, Michigan to Southern California, goes missing and, desperate, following a by-the-numbers lecture from the police, he hires a street-smart, so he says, quirky and blunt L.A. Private Eye...

Enter Peter Boyle, who literally proves that his client's runaway daughter is a porn actress, resulting in an intense scene from Scott that few actors could get away with, or would even attempt attempting in the first place: One that's now an online punchline, although it's not that funny... for the character, who we later follow around the seedy So Cal nightlife as if he were a Film Noir snoop... which he turns into, somewhat...

Peter Boyle and George C. Scott in HARDCORE

What's really intriguing, and even humorous without being distracting, is how Scott's Jake Van Dorn clashes with Boyle's genuine gumshoe, symbolically named Andy Mast, their verbal dynamic exceeding intentional scene-stealer Leonard Gaines as a Los Angeles porn producer more talkative than "Easy Andy" from Schrader's original game-changing script of Martin Scorsese's masterpiece, TAXI DRIVER... 

After a few weeks, Scott's Jake returns to wander the streets of L.A., going from porn stores to massage-brothels backed by Jack Nitzsche's bluesy hard-rock score, practically bursting through the screen (also symbolically backed by Neil Young's vulnerable 'Helpless' playing in a sex shop...

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

The juxtaposition of the fish outta-water loner lost in a modern Gomorrah is both mesmerizing and, for TAXI DRIVER fans, familiar; although eventually, the film loses some validity when our woebegone lead goes undercover as a would-be-producer, donning a bogus mustache and mirrored shades, weeding out young porn-actors in search of the one guy in the only photo of his daughter, at work...

Although this sequence is entertaining, providing a more conventional audience a break from the severe mainline, it somewhat trivializes the edgy and risque subject-at-hand, curtailing the essential danger of the quest, which had a sparse, unapologetic exploitation vibe beforehand...

Season Hubley in HARDCORE

The best scenes occur during the third act, not involving sex or nudity, but what Schrader does best: one-on-one dialogue after Scott hires multi-talented prostitute, porn actress and window-room dancer Season Hubley to help him since Boyle wasn't much help at all...

Sporadic conversations between the businessman and the street girl, ranging from faith to sex to Johnny Carson, evokes peripheral comparisons of two polar opposites – the Calvinist and the Whore, both alike in their aloof indifference to society, and sex – injecting a philosophical edge into the forefront, progressed from Robert DeNiro's conversations with Jodie Foster in TAXI DRIVER...

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

Meanwhile, the stagnant, voyeuristic camera's more seductive than revealing... And the finale, involving Scott beating up anticipated heavy Gary Graham, is too typical, more befitting the following decade (when a punch in the nose would often close the show)...

It's the contrasting... and ultimately connecting... philosophical discussions, providing random breaks throughout an intentionally grueling road, that makes this semi-obscure Paul Schrader vehicle work: a late-70's counter-culture flick that needs a much bigger, far more dedicated cult following – hope this helps. 

George C. Scott and Reb Brown in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

Star Wars in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE with Dick Sargent

Karen Kruer in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

George C. Scott follows Peter Boyle to hardcore dramatics in HARDCORE

An actress who should've been Karen Kruer's mom is Bibi Besch as Mary in HARDCORE

Cute cousins Karen Kruer and Ilah Davis in HARDCORE

Karen Kruer shakes her present from uncle George C. Scott in HARDCORE

Intentional scene-stealer Leonard Gaines with George C. Scott in HARDCORE

George C. Scott and Peter Boyle in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE with Season Hubley

George C. Scott in HARDCORE with Season Hubley

Leslie Ackerman in HARDCORE

George C Scott with Gary Graham in HARDCORE

Around the same time has Gary Graham with Bill Bixby on The Incredible Hulk

Gary Graham the anticipated antagonist from HARDCORE

SEASON HUBLEY in HARDCORE

George C. Scott in HARDCORE