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KATE ATKINSON

VINCE COLOSIMO

DORIAN NKONO

Heist movies are usually fun to watch if the filmmaker can continually engage and surprise us—like a vaudevillian who’s got to keep six or eight plates spinning at the same time. The Hard Word pulls this off with élan, carrying out a story that’s hard-edged and contemporary without falling into pseudo-Tarantino posturing or Guy Ritchie–like self-consciousness. Like its criminal heroes, it’s simply out to get the job done so everyone can enjoy the payoff.

This particular yarn comes from Australian writer-director Scott Roberts, who had the good fortune to land two major stars, Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, for the leading roles.

Pearce plays Dale Twentyman, who’s made a career out of armed robbery, along with his brothers Mal and Shane—and in cahoots with their slick criminal lawyer Frank Malone (Robert Taylor), who knows all the angles. To their minds, serving a stretch in prison is a small price to pay for the rewards awaiting them upon release. But while his clients are behind bars, Malone gets cocky and starts fooling around with Dale’s wife (Griffiths), little dreaming that the sexy blonde is just as smart—and devious—as he is.

The film hinges on the brothers being sprung from prison long enough to pull—you guessed it—one last job, and it’s here that everyone’s plans begin to unravel.

Guy Pearce is a versatile actor who tends to disappear into whatever part he’s playing. The role of Dale offers him the chance to summon up a gritty bravado we don’t often get to see. Griffiths, too, can be mousy or malevolent, depending on the role; here she’s a self-assured sexpot who always seems to know the score.

The Hard Word received a mixed response from critics, but I think it can hold its own alongside any caper movie of recent vintage. Its characters are colorful and well drawn, its action scenes are exciting, and its story twists are unfailingly clever. The Australian cast and setting make it particularly fresh for American viewers.

46. THE HARMONISTS

(1997)

Directed by Joseph Vilsmaier

Screenplay by Klaus Richter

Based on the story by Jürgen Büscher

Actors:

BEN BECKER

HEINO FERCH

ULRICH NOETHEN

HEINRICH SCHAFMEISTER

MAX TIDOF

KAI WIESINGER

MERET BECKER

KATJA RIEMANN

DANA VÁVROVÁ

OTTO SANDER

In the first years of the twenty-first-century, a number of German and Austrian filmmakers have attempted to deal with the emotionally volatile subjects of World War II, Nazism, and the Holocaust. From Blind Spot, a stark documentary interview of Hitler’s secretary; to Downfall, the saga of the führer’s final days; to the Academy Award–winning The Counterfeiters, about a Nazi-controlled counterfeiting ring that operated inside a concentration camp, these (and other) compelling films evoke the turbulent feelings of a modern generation that wants to understand how their parents and grandparents responded to the events of the 1930s and ’40s, and why.

But there is at least one film that predates this recent cycle. It never received the same degree of attention in the United States, although it was a great success in Germany, and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t tackle as weighty a subject…but The Harmonists (known overseas as The Comedian Harmonists) paints a vivid picture of how the Nazis affected, and subverted, every aspect of German life—even its light entertainment.

The Comedian Harmonists were a hugely popular, much loved six-man vocal group that formed in 1927 when Berlin was one of the world’s cultural capitals. As we see in this well-told chronicle, a singer named Harry Frommer-mann (Ulrich Noethen) is inspired by a popular American vocal group called the Revelers, who sold millions of records (and even appeared on-screen in some Vitaphone short subjects). He sets out to create a German equivalent of this close-harmony group, and aspires to the highest musical standards. One by one he recruits the five men who will become his partners—men who are willing to endure hours of relentless rehearsal in order to achieve perfection.

Naturally there