Harsh Times

Harsh Times (2005) is David Ayer's crime thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Jim Davis comes home to Los Angeles from the Army wanting a badge with the LAPD. But the war is still loud inside his head, and the quiet life never quite takes.

Christian Bale plays the ex-Ranger on a slow fuse: by day he chases job offers, by night he tears through South Central with his buddy Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), drinking and looking for trouble. Mike's girlfriend keeps pushing him to grow up; Jim has a fiancee in Mexico and a promise to start over. Neither man keeps a promise for long. The deeper they go, the more they sink into petty hustles and their own paranoia.

This was Ayer's directing debut, made before his later L.A. crime pictures, and it carries the same sweat, the same streets, the same broken veteran with nowhere to land. Bale is raw here, no vanity, no mercy. Stream Harsh Times (2005) online on iFILM.