Walter Hill Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-rays: Hard Times (1975/Columbia/Sony) + The Driver (1978/Fox)

Picture: B Sound: B Extras: C/B- Films: C/B

PLEASE NOTE: The Hard Times and Driver Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, only 3,000 copies have been produced and both can be ordered from the link below.

It's interesting to compare the packaging of Twilight Time's releases of Walter Hill's first two features, Hard Times (1975) and The Driver (1978). Hard Times, a stiff melodrama starring Charles Bronson as a street-fighting drifter named Chaney punching his way through the Depression, has quotes from Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert. The Driver, a pulpy neo-noir starring Ryan O'Neal as a nameless driver on the lam from criminals and cops alike, has unattributed blurbs from TV Guide and The Chicago Reader.

I point this out to illustrate how time is the great equalizer. In 1975, Hard Times probably felt exciting. Bronson is in top quiet-but-tough mode, and James Coburn, playing his fast talking manager, Speed, is as charming as any time in his career. But seen today, Bronson's performance also feels hammy (Coburn is still great), and the film feels shoddy and low-rent. It's also derivative. You can pick out pieces of films as varied as Scarecrow and Cockfighter throughout Hard Times' 94 minutes. The years, it seems, have eroded the stately manner praised by Kael.

The Driver, meanwhile, has aged gracefully. It has the existential cool of Le Samourai, but all the grit and pizzaz that would prove irresistible to everyone from Michael Mann (see: Thief) and Nicolas Winding Refn, whose Drive is a spiritual remake of The Driver. That is to say, Hill's second film brings something new to the table. It has its influences, but it internalizes them and spits out something new and exciting. It's the imitated, not the imitator. Back in '78, it likely seemed the other way around. (That Le Samourai reference is as subtle as a hammer to the face.)

In a way, The Driver is a blank slate. It's stuffed full of style and great car chases, but with characters named the Driver, the Detective (Bruce Dern), and the Connection (Isabelle Adjani), Hill lets our imaginations run wild. We're dropped into the middle of the Driver's story, then once it concludes, he goes one way and we go the other. We get to fill in the Driver's backstory (and future). We're able to extrapolate as to why the Detective is so gonzo. And we get to dream up what's really going on with the Connection. Hill gives us the particulars about a very narrow window; everything else is up to us.

That kind of active viewership is non-existent in Hard Times. There's some mystery about where Chaney comes from and why he's street fighting, but everything else (from Speed's motivations to the relationships between other fighters and managers) is laid out for us. We're passively watching the film, which allows us to be overwhelmed by every creaky trope and stilted line of dialogue.

Clearly, Walter Hill grew a lot as a director and storyteller in only three years. Despite how poorly it has aged, Hard Times is an assured work, especially for a first-time director. But his command of visuals, pacing, tone, and space in The Driver is light years ahead of what he was doing in his first outing. This becomes abundantly clear when watching the films back-to-back. There are some similarities between them - both Bronson and O'Neal speak very little, and Coburn and Dern provide a certain amount of levity and nuance the leads can't command - but in most respects Hill is operating on another level in The Driver.

In the three years between his first and second films, he found his his confidence behind the camera. And with it, he evolved from promising young filmmaker into tough-guy auteur.

Both Hard Times and The Driver Blu-rays are limited edition and feature excellent video quality. Hard Times might look a touch better thanks to its muted visual palette; The Driver is set mostly at night, so things can get a little murky. In the audio department, Hard Times has a lossless 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix, while The Driver has a lossless 1.0 DTS-HD MA Mono track. Naturally, Hard Times sounds better (punches connect with an aural force), and it would've been nice to have something a bit more dynamic for The Driver. The films also boast Twilight Time's standard extras: isolated score, trailer, and liner notes from Julie Kirgo. The Driver has an additional alternate opening. It would have been nice for a more substantive set of features on The Driver especially. Still, it's exciting to have the films on solid Blu-ray releases.

To order either limited edition Blu-ray, buy them while supplies last along with may other exclusives at this link:

www.screenarchives.com

- Dante A. Ciampaglia