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The Harder They Come
Ivanhoe Martin (Jimmy Cliff) arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. Wishing to become successful, Ivanhoe finds himself tied to corrupt record producers and drug pushers.
1 April 1948, St. Catherine, Jamaica
23 November 1941, San Prospero Parmense, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
24 May 1938, Kingston, Jamaica
September 30, 2015
A gritty, realistic view of urban Jamaica that reveals the squalor of shantytowns tourists never see.
April 07, 2010
Perry Henzell's 1972 rugged reggae crime story--loosely based on a '40s-era Jamaican folk hero/criminal--plays like a musically-inspired docudrama of the raw social reality of the impoverished island nation in the '70s.
August 26, 2015
Predated Bob Marley's success by a year.
October 02, 2015
Whatever the film's shortcomings, though, the music is superb.
September 30, 2015
A film so assured and professional that it makes one suspect the presence of a thriving industry that has for years gone unacknowledged in Europe.
June 05, 2012
The definitive postcolonial cult-movie musical.
October 02, 2015
Rough 'n' ready but also rather wonderful.
October 02, 2015
The Harder They Come is always exuberant, and sometimes strong, as casually surprising and effortlessly sinister as the blade sliding out of a gravity knife.
May 27, 2009
Perry Henzell emerges a director with a solid visual flair who can mix action and inchoate rage sans excess to give the film a taut pacing and use the local color and a basically predictable tale with a few new twists.
February 09, 2006
The action is as gutsy as the well-integrated score, which makes the movie's Hollywood-style gloss a little anomalous, but the basic humour and toughness emerge unscathed.
June 05, 2012
Atrocious acting, amateurish camerawork and a hackneyed story line all make for one painful slog.
October 02, 2015
With this 1972 cult hit, Jamaican filmmaker Perry Henzell produced a proud, forthright indictment of national and personal corruption.
