Fantastic!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

At present, "Drive Hard" has a 4.5/10 rating on IMDb and a 1-star Netflix rating, which will probably leave you with visions of a trainwreck. Best case scenario, it's an entertaining one (like "Drive Angry"). But this is not in that league."Collateral" came to mind when Jane and Cusack psycho analyze each other in the car, but that's not a flattering comparison. Any actual characterization is buried under their tired buddy-comedy/drama/action . . . thing. The car chases have no tension, the leads share zero chemistry and they both look like they want to be far away from this (Cusack especially). The best I can say about this is "Eh, I've seen worse", but what kind of compliment is that? It's really not all that bad, I guess, just tepid and ineffectual.4/10

In Australia, Simon Keller (John Cusack) hires Peter Roberts (Thomas Jane), who is a former professional racing driver, to act as the get-a-way driver while he robs a bank. Of course, Roberts has no idea what he is getting into.From the get-go, we see this is not a drama or even an action-hero movie. The acting and dialogues are so bad we see that something else is going on and decide this is a lame, lame comedy. We don't often see (read never) John Cusack in a comedy and watching this we can see why. But wait a minute something else is going on: it's supposed to be terrible or so we believe. That is the only explanation that makes sense. (Hmmmm……)Now, knowing this one can sit back and enjoy this, right? Wrong. It's still terrible. The acting and dialogues don' t change to anything better. It's embarrassing to admit we watched it all the way thru. True some bad movies become cult classics. I think we are safe to say the cults will stay away for fear of harming their reputations. Why, in Heaven's name, is this the way it is? No one knows. Suffice it to say there is something else going on. Keller surprises why he robbed the bank and we do learn more, but do we care? No. Still this doesn't help much because something else is going on. What that something is we cannot say. We are clueless. Even the car chases are not choreographed in a good way. The supporting cast don't any fare better and cannot save this. Something is really wrong here. However, after watching this we decide there was nothing else going on after all. We can only hope that Mr Cusack goes back to being a good dramatic actor. And the same for Thomas Jane. (who?) (1/10)Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes.

Peter Roberts (Thomas Jane) is a former professional racing driver turned driving instructor. He lives with his lawyer wife and young daughter. When he goes into work, he finds himself unexpectedly teaching new student Simon Keller (John Cusack). However, Keller isn't interested in learning to drive and deliberately books a lesson with Roberts with the sole intention of using him as his getaway driver for a bank robbery that he intends to commit - due to Roberts reputation as a professional driver. Once the robbery has taken place, Keller finds himself on the run from several parties with Roberts as an accessory to the crime.Laboured and laughter free are probably the best words to describe this appalling excuse of a film; it started off badly and just never recovered. There are holes in the script right from the start - when Keller is having his supposed driving lesson and starts driving like a lunatic, yet Roberts (the instructor) is not able to do anything about it. Do driving school cars not have dual controls in Australia? Keller pulls up halfway through a driving lesson for a cup of coffee - who the hell would do that? Despite this, Roberts still isn't suspicious that something is amiss with Keller. Come on!Keller and Roberts are on the run from the police, the feds, and assassins within Rossi's organisation, but decide to make several routine stops along the way so that they can rob cars from people. What was the point in doing that? They ditched Roberts' car and swapped it for a different car after they had evaded the police so the police would have still been looking for the original car. Outside of the ridiculous script, the film also boasts some of the most pathetic car chases that I've ever seen. This film is supposed to be an action comedy...hmmm well there was some action, but I didn't see any comedy. It's very rare that I don't laugh at least once even when I watch a bad comedy, but I honestly did not laugh once throughout this sorry mess of a film. The chemistry between Cusack and Jane was awkward and as mentioned every single attempt at creating humour was a misfire.The performances across the board were pretty poor as well; Cusack, for me, tried too hard and I expect that he was trying to compensate for the shoddy material that he was given to work with. Jane doesn't fare any better and just wasn't convincing in his respective role.The thing that annoyed me the most about this film was some of the twists later in the film; for about 2/3 of the running time Roberts keeps harping on about wanting Keller to let him go and stating that he doesn't want to be his getaway driver. However, in the final 1/3 of the film Roberts willingly assists Keller and actually ended up more like an accomplice. The sole thing this film had going for it up to this point was Roberts likability, but even that disappeared out of the window. Worse still, Roberts is branded a hero at the end of the film getting sponsorship deals to re-ignite his racing career even though he clearly acted more like an accomplice than a mere kidnapped getaway driver in the later stages. So not only was the film laboured and laughter-free it also arrives at a conclusion that was completely immoral. 0 out of 10. Pathetic!

Seriously bad performances. I am guessing the director was asleep or had specified clauses in each of the actors contracts that they could not rehearse and were only allowed one take for each scene.Production standards date back beyond Mad Max low budget cheapies and the script was just awful. This is a genuine rotten tomato. I believe it fails on every level. I am surprised he can command A list actors.Who pays Brian Trenchard Smith this kind of money; because he comes across as definitely lacking. And I am guessing after this piece of detritus, very few would be likely to waste $12 mil on this kind of embarrassment again.Unless its like some kind of money laundering scam?