Hardcase (1972)

          In the great 1966 Western The Professionals, mercenaries enter Mexico to rescue an American’s wife, who was supposedly kidnapped by a revolutionary, only to discover the wife has become romantically involved with the revolutionary. A twist on that premise drives the agreeable made-for-TV Western Hardcase, starring former Cheyenne star Clint Walker and Stefanie Powers. Ex-soldier Jack (Walker) returns from POW incarceration to discover that his wife, Roz (Powers), not only ran off with revolutionary Simon (Pedro Aremendáriz Jr.) but, thinking Jack dead, sold his ranch to buy supplies for Simon’s rebel band. Hardcase, titled for a nickname someone hangs on the stoic protagonist, dramatizes how Jack responds to this conundrum. This telefilm is so light on plot that it resembles an episode of some generic Western anthology; similarly, the piece has the over-lit aesthetic and unimaginative camerawork of vintage episodic television. Yet Hardcase boasts a reasonably intelligent script, by Hollywood veterans Harold Jack Bloom and Sam Rolfe, and the narrative successfully ensnares its protagonist in a fraught moral dilemma. As a result, the movie is simple without being wholly simplistic.
          Anyone who has encountered a Walker performance knows better than to expect nuance from his acting—his towering physicality and granite features lend so much visual impact that he if he aims in the general direction of a dramatic texture and doesn’t exert himself, he’s able to put across something adequate. Powers is similarly limited in her abilities. Perhaps that’s why they make a compatible duo in Hardcase—the boundaries of his skills suit a character who has difficulty expressing emotion, just as the boundaries of hers fit the character of a woman torn between conflicting loyalties. Meanwhile, Aremendáriz Jr. capably offers a frontier riff on the Paul Henreid role from Casablanca (1942) and former NFL player Alex Karras, in his first proper movie performance, lends a mix of amiability and grit. The dramatic beats these actors perform get plenty of screen time because the movie doesn’t have much action—or, for that matter, much tension. It’s tempting to guess that Hardcase is so gentle because it was the first live-action movie from kiddie-animation specialists Hanna-Barbera Productions. 

Hardcase: FUNKY