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Playing with the themes and narrative structure of John Ford’s The Searchers 1956 even more explicitly than he did with Taxi Driver 1976, Paul Schrader’s Hardcore finds Jake Van Dorn (George C Scott), a conservative religious businessman from Grand Rapids, Michigan (Schrader’s real life hometown), searching for his missing daughter in California after she inexplicably shows up in a pornographic film shot in Los Angeles.

Directing his own script, Schrader constructs a sweaty and lascivious world for Van Dorn to enter in his misguided quest to save his daughter. Academy Award winner Scott gives an intense and vulnerable performance, alternating between despair and determination as his search takes him deeper into the pornographic underworld of California and further away from his life in Grand Rapids. Schrader’s sophomore directorial effort is an engrossing mystery coloured by a vivid trip into a world of sex and decadence.

R18+