"Harsh Times": Christian Bale May Be Too Good at Playing Men at or Over the Breaking Point

Freddy Rodriguez's character Rico was my favorite on "Six Feet Under." Rico was dominated by his wife Vanessa (Justina Machado) who exacted a heavy price for his straying. "Harsh Times" was made around the end of "Six Feet Under" in 2005. In it, Rodri'Æ'''­guez plays a slacker (in contrast to the ambitious and professional Rico), Mike Alonzo, who has a girlfriend, Sylvia (Eva Longoria) who dominates him, at least intermittently. She wants him to get a job, not hang out, drink, and smoke every day with his buddy Jim Luther Davis (Christian Bale). It is obvious to her and to viewers that Jim is very bad news, a danger to self and others.

Both Mike and their Arab friend decide that Jim has gotten too crazy and is no longer any fun to hang with. The way Bale plays him, it's impossible to believe that Jim used to be fun.

If post-traumatic stress disorder (from torturing and killing prisoners in Iraq) is supposed to be the reason for his conduct, I would think that he's been erratic with flashes of rage since his return.

Perhaps the scariest thing is that he wants a career in law enforcement. The LAPD turns him down for psychological (psychoPATHOLOGICAL) reasons, but the feds (CIA + DEA) want to send him off to work with Colombian police to kill those in the drug trade there.

It seems that every second or third word in Jim's lines is some form of the f-word. For the other male characters, it's maybe every fourth word. There's also graphic violence and a lot of drug use. There are no love scenes nor nudity, so the MPAA let it through with an R rating (while stamping NC-17 on movies with male-male love scenes...)

I'm not at all sure that Christian Bale (who won a 2010 Oscar as the scheming psychopathic older brother/manager of Mark Wahlberg's "The Fighter") delivers a good performance in "Harsh Times," but there's no question that his portrayal of Jim is intense. I'm beginning to wonder if Bale can play anything other than men near (or in this case over) the edge of sanity. Certainly, that includes Bruce Wayne/Batman. I thought that Bale was great in the extreme role of Dieter escaping a Laotian Viet Cong prison camp in Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn." Indeed, Herzog seems the ideal director for Bale. (Not that I think that Bale approaches Klaus Kinski in offscreen insanity, but he's in that league onscreen.)

Traveling in Latin America, I always find 15-year-olds with automatic rifles unnerving. The movie's Jim is no more mature and is plenty scary without a badge and a license to kill. Mike is more sensible, but not all that much more mature. There are plenty of good reasons for Sylvia to attempt to wean Mike from Jim (and the bottles the two overaged adolescents throw back). Jim -- and it seems to me writer-director David Ayer (best known for writing "Training Day") -- are nihilists. There's a shambles of a plot and little character development. Jim's life and rages are sporadic, I guess, but does the movie need to be so sporadic? I don't think so.

And the last scenes, both with Rodriguez, go over into bathetic sentimentality. Perhaps the very last scene is earned, but the eusthanasia one isn't!