Producers: Allison R. Smith, Justin Corsbie and Douglas Matejka Director: Justin Corsbie Screenplay: Justin Corsbie and Craig Ugoretz Cast: Michael Dorman, Sophia Bush, Dermot Mulroney, RZA, Eric Roberts, Melora Walters and Brian Sacca Distributor: Roadside Attractions
Grade: C
Inspiration for a screenplay can come from anywhere, so there’s certainly no shame in first-time writer-director Justin Corsbie’s taking his from a country-western song—Todd Snider’s “Just Like Old Times,” which we see Snider performing before a live audience during the closing credits. But in narrative terms “Hard Luck Love Song” doesn’t appreciably improve on Snider’s lyrics, and the result is an atmospheric but thin character-centered piece that goes explosively wrong at the close.
The first forty minutes draws a portrait of Jesse (Michael Dorman), a skinny wanderer who composes tunes on his guitar and makes ends meet by hustling players in pool halls as he drives aimlessly from town to town. He’s a rootless, free-spirited type willing to take chances, but one can sense an undercurrent of unhappiness beneath the surface confidence and friendliness to those he casually encounters. Dorman doesn’t make him exactly charismatic, but in his hands the character is at least intriguing.
What happens to him, however, is pretty slim pickings for a feature. He takes a bundle from Rollo (Dermot Mulroney, going full sneer) at a pool contest in a smoky bar, earning the ire of the guy and his posse of brutes when he refuses to go double or nothing.
He escapes, but instead of skipping town, as one might have expected him to do, he invites to his motel room an erstwhile girlfriend Carla (Sophia Bush), whom he’s found in an ad for a local “escort” service. He knows he made a mistake in dumping her years ago, and though she’s initially resistant to his come-on, soon they’re partying wildly, leading a cop (Brian Sacca) to show up. Fortunately Officer Zach’s a nice guy, and lets them off with a warning.
After pausing for a rather irrelevant stop-off with some of Carla’s pals, most notably Skip (the seemingly inevitable Eric Roberts), the two are menaced all too predictably by Rollo and his thugs. Luckily Carla’s pimp Louis (RZA) shows up to ensure the safety of his investment. Zach reappears, too, defusing a potentially fraught situation by saying “I’m a cop—I can do anything”—a line that nowadays might not carry the genial quality it’s meant to have.
Bush is an attractive match for Dorman, and the two develop an engaging if raucous rapport as their characters reengage, even if Jesse and Carla never grow into people you really care about. Roberts does his gruff shtick, and Sacca makes Zach a likable, if hardly terribly efficient, officer of the law; RZA is surprisingly convincing. But “Hard Luck Love Song” remains largely Dorman’s show.
The production quality is adequate but little more. Marie Jach’s production design conveys the requisite seediness, and Jas Shelton’s cinematography captures the low-rent ambience, particularly in the scenes of smoky pool halls. Except in chase and fight scenes J. Davis’ editing doesn’t rush, but it generates some tension along the way, while the score by Will and Brooke Blair contributes nicely to the mood—as do the songs integrated into the story.
Bur while essentially faithful to the song that inspired it, the script’s expansions aren’t always happy ones, and of course the song only had to hold your interest for five minutes or so, not a hundred-plus.