Film.com's FREE movie of the week is "Love the Hard Way." Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Charlotte Ayanna star in this drama about a thief who falls for a curious, beautiful young woman. As their intimacy grows, a slick cop (Pam Greer) is closing in.
An examination of group cooperation, social conflict, urban change and more than 60 years of Black/Jewish relations in the working-class Brooklyn community of Brownsville. The film begins by describing how a group of poor Jewish and African-American teenagers banded together to form the Brownsville Boys Club in order to to solve a simple problem: the lack of available space in order to play ball. The club fielded integrated sports teams (years before Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers) and organized even more controversial social "mixers." The second part of the film sheds new light on the struggle over control of Brownsville's public schools, which culminated in the famous 1968 stand-off between minority residents and the predominantly Jewish United Federation of Teachers. Finally, the film examines the disintegration of Brownsville following a disastrous policy of urban renewal.