Based on folk singer Todd Snider’s 2006 song “Just Like Old Times,” Hard Luck Love Song seems like the embodiment of an old country tune padded to feature length. To its credit, much of these 104 minutes goes by as easily as the corny lyrics sung over a familiar chord change on a battered acoustic guitar. Director Justin Corsbie, who co-wrote the screenplay with Craig Ugoretz, is in thrall to country and folk music and ‘70s independent cinema; but he’s not quite lucky enough.
The movie opens with a timeline that’s fractured in more than one sense of the word: we meet Jesse (Michael Dorman) in a dark alley, his face bloodied after some beating that the movie will soon explain. A quick cut to daylight and we see Jesse driving in his beat up jalopy touring some dusty American road. As he stops in a hotel room, he breaks open his cast, wriggling his fingers free in some kind of metaphor that spools out when a flashback fills us in on his story. You see, Jesse has been amusing himself hustling pool in a small but kind of rough California town. After he gets invited to a big game where the main competition is a grizzled guy named Rollo (Dermot Mulroney), Jesse decides to look up his old girlfriend Carla (Sophia Bush)—and finds her number in the escort pages.
Jesse and Carla are fairly stock characters, and the actors don’t do much to elevate them from cliché, but cinematographer Jas Shelton goes a long way to making this journey pleasant, finding the right dive bar and neon-drenched hotel to perpetuate an American myth you’ve seen a few hundred times. For the most part, what keeps you watching Hard Luck Love Song are the supporting figures. Mulroney is fine as a veteran billiards bum who doesn’t like to get hustled (though you wonder how Jesse got as far as he did in that town without someone catching on). Smaller parts are even more satisfying, Rollo’s grotesque henchman Bump (Randal Reeder), or a character played by Biff Wiff and billed as The Man in the 38-Special T-Shirt, and any number of uncredited kitchen workers and diners at the bars and restaurants where Jesse stops to refuel. Best of all is reigning B-movie champ Eric Roberts in a bit part as the owner of a juke joint―probably not the technical term for the establishment, but that’s the mood they’re going for. It’s such a treat to see Roberts outside of typical recent fare like the Stalked by My Doctor series. Hard Luck isn’t as prestigious as Inherent Vice, but it’s a step in the right direction.
If Dorman isn’t convincing enough in his shaggy leading role, it’s in part because he’s given too much to haul: here, buddy, it’s America, carry the whole weight of the ‘70s cinematic renaissance on your shoulders. He can’t—who can? Hard Luck Love Song sounds like something you’ve heard before, and sometimes that doesn’t matter; but by the time the goofily triumphant ending rolls around, you realize this isn’t a winning hand.
Photo courtesy of Roadside-Attractions
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