Hard Rush - Impact's DVD Review

Pop video visuals, a glossy European aesthetic and a director who thinks he’s Michael Mann… this is Hard Rush, a wannabe hi-octane thriller from Giorgio Serafini that aspires to be a good deal better than it actually is.

Dolph Lundgren is the ostensible lead in a cast that also includes Randy Couture as a bent cop and Vinnie Jones as a psychotic drug lord who casually kills minions before resuming his lunch.

But the brunt of the action is borne by Daniel Bonjour and Gianni Capaldi as a pair of small-time drug peddlers with an eye on the big time who steal a mighty stash from the wrong guy. Soon the DEA is poking around these various bad guys whilst dodgy ‘tecs throw their own spanner in the works.

Gunplay and leggy babes do not a film noir make. Serafini labours hard to lift his film above the level of ‘B’ movie and he has the sense to enlist the services of action veterans such as Lundgren (playing it straight) and Couture (ditto, and one of the best elements of the picture).

Hard Rush fails due to the inadequacies – and there are many – of its script. Old pros like Lundgren can lend a weary grace to mediocre lines and he carries his scenes in Hard Rush. But in the hands of Bonjour and, particularly, Capaldi (a relative of TV’s new Dr Who) it emerges as spectacularly lame.

Cuban screenwriter Agustin throws everything into the mix and borrows heavily from a raft of heavyweight contemporaries. A final gun battle has a feel of Tarantino but it’s messily handled. And as Hard Rush stampedes to its conclusion it feels Michael Mann-lite.

But as a ‘B’ movie it has much to commend it, even if the inclusion of Vinnie Jones in a handful of scenes feels like something of a cheat...