"Oh my God, that's my daughter." So read the advertising copy of Hardcore. George C. Scott plays Jake Van Dorn, a man of means and conservative values who discovers that his precious daughter is appearing in X-rated films. Desperately making his way through the sub-rosa world of pornography, Van Dorn talks to pimps, prostitutes, and other such sterling individuals in hopes of locating his daughter and dragging her home. At one point, he falsely advertises himself as a porn producer in hopes that his little girl will show up for an interview. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
lost interest.
For his second film as writer/director,
Paul Schrader merged elements of his Midwestern Dutch Calvinist background, his cinephilia, and California post-'60s sexual decadence in the bleak drama Hardcore. Modeled -- like
Taxi Driver (1976) -- after
John Ford's seminal Western
The Searchers (1956), Hardcore's story of a pious father's search for his runaway daughter takes an intense George C. Scott from his upstanding Michigan home through the sordid wilderness of the California porn world. Scott's revulsion is matched by the film's morbid fascination with the sex industry.
Peter Boyle's unsavory private investigator and
Season Hubley's strung-out hooker serve as compelling protectors and guides. True to the Ford antecedent, Scott's daughter resists her rescue, but the clumsily incongruous ending carries none of
The Searchers' or
Taxi Driver's expressive ambiguity. Even with its flaws, however, Hardcore's stolidly mournful, occasionally complex examination of a cultural dark side is almost everything
Joel Schumacher's ultra-sleazy porn odyssey
8MM (1999) wants to be but isn't. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide