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.
In the off-season after all the tourists have left for home, there is a sudden spate of murders. An unnamed plain-clothes cop with a pathological weakness for luxury cars and naughty Russian women investigates the killings. He enlists the help of a photo-store clerk and a young hotel maid. This strange threesome re-enacts the crimes in an attempt to solve them, but also come to delight in their dramatic rituals of dress-up. The clerk is an odd, solitary figure who works part-time as a special-events videographer, while the maid is an enthusiastic actor. The cop is equally keen when it comes to directing the mise-en-scene of the homicides, but his macabre orchestrations are often of questionable forensic value. In fact, as the killings continue, the unwholesome triumvirate gives up on trying to catch the murderer and their own private, vaguely sordid motivations completely take over.