Hardcore (18) + intro

Paul Schrader’s second directorial work, following Blue Collar (1978), this psychological neo-noir sees a devout Calvinist businessman, played by George C. Scott, leave his Midwestern town to find his teenage daughter, who has vanished on a church-sponsored trip to California.

His worldview is upended when the search becomes a nightmare odyssey through the sleazy underbelly of California, as the realisation that his daughter’s whereabouts are worse than he could imagine.

Often framed as a 70s retelling of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), Hardcore paints a bleak portrait of the American Dream and its fragile promise of moral certainty.

A personal work for Schrader, who was brought up Calvinist, the film explores a number of themes - faith (and crisis of), alienation, repression and the possibility of redemption - that were introduced in his writing of Taxi Driver (1976) and would later become his directorial signature.