When I first read the syllabus some 3 months ago, I thought that this week’s film, “The Harder They Come” sounded like some cheesy late 80’s early 90’s Steven Segal action flick. I can see the tag line now: the Japanese underworld thought they had him and his family down, but Steven Segal will show them…”The Harder they Come!” (That or it sounded like a title for a porno film. “The Harder They Come volume 28!”)

But actually this week’s film is actually the classic 1970’s midnight cinema cult classic starring the reggae icon, Jimmy Cliff and is reported by my professor to be the first feature length film made in Jamaica. And the reggae soundtrack wasn’t as awful as i thought it was going to be.

What from I could gather from this weeks film, that the plot is your classic “country boy moves to the city, gets ripped off, joins a church, runs off with the preachers daughter, knifes some random dude but doesn’t go to jail, becomes a recording star turned pot dealer, then goes on a random cop killing rampage and becomes an outlaw folk hero, and then is killed by the police on a beach” story.

Thank whatever deity of your choice that this film is somewhat visually interesting looking because the characters accents were so thick, that I couldn’t make out 92% of the dialogue and the copy we saw in class had no subtitles. Which, I think, actually worked out to my advantage because after the first 5 minutes or so, I decided to mentally create my own dialog and Felini style plot line to the film, which I think was probably more interesting that what was presented on the screen had I actually understood what the fuck was actually being said. ( Yeah, I could wikipedia this film and find out what actually happens but that wouldn’t be as fun as solving the mystery in my own way.)

Next week on the syllabus: Breaker Morant!

jareddriskill