"Hard Candy" is a movie that starts out fascinating but two-thirds of the way in, runs the plot straight into the gutter. Led by two top-notch actors, Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page, playing Jeff and Haley respectively.
Jeff is a photographer that likes to chat up young girls on the internet. Young as in '14 years old'. Jeff is thirty something. And when you come to find that the largest portion of his photographic portfolio is pictures that as he say 'legally skirt the boundaries' of child porn (so, yeah, this is the guy that made that infamous ADIDAS ad apparently), you start to feel icky. But he seems like a nice guy despite it.
Haley is an innocent young girl that like to chat up men twice her age and flirt with them. A lot. She invites herself into their homes and grabs the dudes alcohol and starts pouring for the both of them. There's back and forth flirtation, and then Jeff passes out. The little girl drugged him.
It's sooooo ironic!
Supposedly, this little girl is a brilliant 14 year old psychopath. She proceeds to set up a mini-surgery ward (all out of a messenger bag, mind you), complete with doctor's smocks and scalpels. She then proceeds to castrate Jeff, believing that he's a pedophile. While there's some evidence of it, it's not that strong. And if he is, it's perhaps a 1 on a scale of 1-10.
Haley believes that he killed another girl and does all sorts of evil things and that she's going to torture him for it. She does do this indeed - she throws him around like a rag doll, tasers him multiple times, and hangs him a from a noose. *This* is where it gets really hard to suspend disbelief - she's a 14 year old girl, she's not going to be beating the shit out of 183 pound fit guy and then hauling his dead weight body all *over* the place (including vertically into a high noose). Jeff may be a little bitch, but the girl, no matter how hardcore, is not The Terminator, which she'd have to be for the scenes I sat through to become plausible.
Lo and behold, the castration she performs on Jeff turns out to be an elaborate fake. He frees himself, only to get taken down *again* by a 14 year old girl half his size. With a taser. In a bathtub (yes, it would fry them *both*) and she more or less kicks his ass around like 'it weren't no thang'. At some point, you just go "Yeahhhh right."
And then, she manages to guilt himself into hanging himself from the roof, on the threat that his ex-gf that he's still hardcore not over will find the evidence that's been left out. So deciding to hang himself rather than ruin his reputation, he throws himself off the building.
From what I know of child molesters, they are canny and instinctive devious fucks. They are terrible, horrible people inside, and hardly the type to commit suicide. Any one that's ever been arrested would have (going through the various opportunities in the movie) a.) stabbed the girl, b.) shot the girl, c.) thrown the girl off the roof. Jeff isn't very good at child molesting, ok, but he can only defend himself as well as a 14 year old girl... Come on.
Haley isn't believable as The Terminator character she's made out to be.
Or as the brilliant med school student twice her age.
Or any of the 'honor school' abilities she shows - maybe one is plausible, but past that... No.
The characters just doesn't make any fucking sense.
Very prettily shot movie, first third is impressive, but it rapidly spirals down into a farce. Don't bother watching this one unless you have some burning desire to see it for some reason.
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