Critics reviews

The Harder They Come may be rough around the edges, with awkward jumps in the narrative and some technically deficient scenes where one can barely even make out what’s happening due to poor lighting or clumsy framing, but Henzell captures images of sensuousness and natural beauty throughout...

Powered by one of the most infectious scores in the history of cinema, it is also a pop classic.

Too often dismissed as "that Jimmy Cliff film," it might be overlooked that this 1972 slum-gangster flick cum star-vehicle was the first feature to be made in Jamaica by Jamaicans, and is a heck of a smart story... Though not particularly well received upon its release, THE HARDER THEY COME has aged well, and remains a benchmark in post-colonial cinema.

The film's tone is righteously angry, but it doesn't go for the easy targets: it views Cliff's image of himself as a hero as ironically as it denounces police violence and missionary-style religion. Along the way, it offers a richly textured picture of Jamaican shanty-town life, composed with a terrific eye for detail.

The Harder They Come is the movie that popularized reggae music in America, and the film's score – with classics such as “Many Rivers to Cross” and “You Can Get It if You Really Want” – is still one of the great movie soundtracks of all time. And the movie's critiques of the music industry, the ganja trade, and organized religion still ring true.

Layered with biting ironies, Henzell's story lands forceful blows to the capital-A Authority that poisons just about every social and religious institution in the city. Shooting in documentary style, his camera stays tuned to the shantytown squalor of the Kingston slums, where people are shown sifting through beachside garbage heaps, looking for scraps of food.

With street-proud attitudes and juicy tropical emotions, this film renews the timeless story of the simple country man who refuses to drown in an urban cesspool.

A long-standing cult favourite on the midnight screening circuit, it feels a bit worn around the edges, yet Perry Henzell’s energetic direction of a well written story gives the film an angry momentum. Best of all though is the rollicking bubble gum reggae soundtrack.

A cautionary gangster flick, a crude musical and a rags-to-riches yarn rolled into one, "The Harder They Come" is director Perry Henzell's 1972 vision of emerging Jamaican identity.

What immediately grabs me about this rough jewel, apart from jimmy Cliff’s powerhouse songs, is the elusive and elliptical editing of the narrative away from and into stray details, the grainy color that gives a downhome rat’s-eye view of what slickness looks like to powerless people, and the raw, melodious beauty of the non-actorly voices, which evokes some of the warm vocal sounds in Renoir’s TONI.

Jimmy Cliff... and the first feature made there [Jamaica] that deals with Jamaican life - has radiance and the verve of an instinctive actor. The film itself is a mess, but the music is redeeming, and Jimmy Cliff's joy in music, along with the whole culture's, stays with you.

For all its naive charm, the movie is not consistently successful. Its crudities of characterization and carelessness about certain matters of plot give it a kind of jerry-built look. But The Harder They Come is always exuberant, and sometimes strong, as casually surprising and effortlessly sinister as the blade sliding out of a gravity knife.