Mitchell Beaupre Paste Magazine Jun 24, 2024 9/10

Each scene reveals something new about this world and its inhabitants.

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Justine Smith Vague Visages Jun 6, 2024

Jake’s quest reveals the broken and modern world, but also the failure of the old values that empower men to face themselves as they are, rather than as they should be.

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Matt Brunson Film Frenzy Sep 9, 2023 3/4

Hardcore is a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess, and it’s held together by a galvanizing performance from George C. Scott, an actor so intense that one feels he might bust a blood vessel or 12 in any given scene.

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Richard Brody The New Yorker Sep 8, 2023

Schrader’s directorial manner is tightly restrained, spare and unshowy, not even conspicuous in its austerity, but marked by a sleek and fragile tension that suggests a volcano that’s ready to blow just beneath the surface.

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Budd Wilkins Slant Magazine Sep 6, 2023

Paul Schrader’s film chronicles a man’s harrowing descent into a netherworld of total depravity.

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Josh Larsen LarsenOnFilm Mar 23, 2023 2.5/4

Both screed and confession...

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Rob Gonsalves Rob's Movie Vault Aug 30, 2022 C-

Overall, a clammy and sensationalistic film on a potentially great subject.

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Robin Tyler The Lesbian Tide Apr 27, 2020

The Motion Picture Industry has exploited women for so many years, in so many ways, that it is hard to think that they can ever top themselves. Well, they have finally reached the bottom of their sewers. It's a movie called Hardcore.

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David Nusair Reel Film Reviews Mar 29, 2020 3.5/4

...a compelling and often shocking drama that also succeeds as a time capsule of a very specific time and place.

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Jesús Fernández Santos El Pais (Spain) Aug 6, 2019

The movie is nothing but a word game designed to impress a public interested in depraved and industrialized sex. [Full Review in Spanish]

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Richard Corliss Maclean's Magazine Jul 19, 2019

Despite its subject, the movie is beyond austerity -- it's inert.

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Cole Smithey ColeSmithey.com Jun 15, 2017 B+

Although flawed by a trope-filled ending, "Hardcore" is a fascinating social drama that makes scathing commentary about capitalism and America's puritanical pretenses.

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Nov 23, 2009 B-

Hardcore is a softcore porn film that needed to be hardcore to have street cred as a believable investigative film about the porn industry.

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Brian Tallerico UGO Mar 24, 2007 3/5

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Jake Euker F5 (Wichita, KS) Aug 4, 2005 1/5

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Chuck O'Leary Fantastica Daily Aug 4, 2005 5/5

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Jun 29, 2005 4/5

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Scott Weinberg eFilmCritic.com Apr 3, 2005 3.5/5

A big throbbing stress-headache of a movie, but you won't be able to turn it off.

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Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times Oct 23, 2004 4/4

Hardcore, flawed and uneven, contains moments of pure revelation.

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Bill Chambers Film Freak Central Sep 5, 2004 2.5/4

Though Hardcore's so-called gritty images do have the power to disturb, it's because we're intrinsically aware of their psychic scourge on the hero

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