Hard Luck Love Song | Through the Shattered Lens

2020’s Hard Luck Love Story tells the tale of a man named Jesse (Michael Dorman).

Jesse is a drifter, heading from town to town and staying in cheap motels. He plays the guitar and sings to himself. He goes to pool halls and hustles people out of their money, earing him the enmity of a heavily tattooed redneck named Rollo (Dermot Mulroney). He drinks when he’s alone. He drinks when he’s with other people. On the one hand, he’s a pool hustler who makes his living by cheating other people. On the other hand, he’s the type who will hug strangers and give them all of his money. Jesse’s not really a bad guy but he’s someone who, as fate would have it, seems to live in a world that’s dominated by frequently bad people. When Jesse has enough money to afford some beer and some cocaine, he calls his ex-girlfriend, Carly (Sophia Bush), to his hotel. Over the course of a night, we get to know them. Neither one is quite who we originally assumed. Jesse makes a lot of mistakes and he has a talent for angering even the people who try to help him but it’s impossible not to like him. Some of that is due to Michael Dorman’s charismatic performance. Even more of it is because everyone has known someone like Jesse, the well-meaning guy who just has a talent for screwing up.

Hard Luck Love Story is a piece of Americana, one that captures the atmosphere of small towns struggling to survive, dive bars full of broken dreams, and rain-slicked nights when it seems like just about anything can happen. It captures life on the fringes with empathy and a sense of humor. Jesse and Carly may be the heart of the story but the film is full of interesting characters, the types who you could only find in the small cities of Middle America. I particularly liked Zach (Brian Sacca), the bearded cop who goes from being intimidating to being likable in his own dorky way.

Eric Roberts has a small role in this film. He plays Skip, an associate of Carly’s. Roberts doesn’t have a lot of screentime but he makes the most of it. There’s a tendency to be dismissive of the roles that Roberts does nowadays. In his autobiography, Roberts is himself fairly dismissive of a lot of them. But, in Hard Luck Love Song, he gets a chance to create an actual character and he definitely makes an impression. He’s not just Eric Roberts doing a cameo. Instead, he’s very much a part of the film’s world.

Hard Luck Love Song is an engrossing trip through the parts of America that tend to get overlooked by other films. The film is based on an alt-country song and it hits all the right notes.

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