Love the Hard Way (DVD)

On the heels of his Academy Award triumph, 2002 Best Actor Oscar winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist, The Thin Red Line) is electrifying as Jack, a dark hearted, smooth operating con-man with a poet's soul.

By night, Jack and his partner Charlie (Jon Seda - Oz, Selena) masquerade as vice cops to pull risky scams on Manhattan tourists, while by day Jack secretly crafts a pulp novel culled from the experiences and emotions that define his shady life. But Jack's streetwise strut and snakeskin jacket charm prove no match for Claire (Charlotte Ayanna - Training Day), a beautiful, straight-laced grad student who sees through Jack's lone wolf exterior to the vulnerable, volatile man within.

Helpless in the face of Jack's charisma, Claire finds herself drawn into his secret world of back alley shadows and seedy hotel rooms -- a muted whirlpool of true love, false loyalty, and whispered lies that could claim more than just Claire's heart. With Jack barely a step ahead of 70s blaxploitation icon Pam Grier's (Coffy, Jackie Brown) Det. Linda Fox, the couple's modern fairytale romance threatens to careen into an all too real tough-luck nightmare of self-destructive obsession and degradation.

A hard-hitting but exquisitely tender love story from German director Peter Sehr (Kaspar Hauser), Love the Hard Way offers a unique glimpse into the rhythms and temptations of underworld Manhattan. Adrien Brody's infectious pitch-perfect characterization of Jack transforms Love the Hard Way into an unforgettable urban aria of a life too wild and a love too deep.