Hard Time: The Premonition

At the end of the previous year's Hard Times, Burt Reynolds has decided to take the fall for partner Charles Durning. It means one-to-five years in prison. Since he's an ex-cop, he can't be in the general population, so they stick him on Death Row, between Roscoe Lee Browne, who has grown philosophical, and Bruce Dern, who keeps talking about his crazy dreams. When Reynolds gets out, he stays in the back room of Paul Bartel's bar, with the huge mastiff, and refuses to have anything to do with Durning. But the police come to him: it turns out that Dern's rambling about his dreams are absolutely accurate in predicting a current serial killer. He won't talk to anyone but Reynolds, and he won't talk to Reynolds until one man is released from prison, and Dern's daughter, Gigi Rice, visits him in prison. Which she refuses to do.

TNT thought they had a shot at respectability with these made-for-TV movies starring Reynolds, but Reynolds isn't putting much effort into it, adding quizzical comic interpretations of his lines; frankly, with the heavy-handed depression that director David Cass Sr. Invests the movie, a little comic relief is welcome. But it makes such a hash of Reynolds' character, that there's no dramatic tension in the character arcs. You know everyone and everything is going to come around all right in the end. Except for the unseen victims of the serial killers.

Burt usually just plays himself and occasionally that's enough to carry a well written movie - like "Sharkey's Machine.

Not so this time. It's a lame story, lame acting, a lame screenplay and in general a waste of time.

Save yourself from this one and watch something else or just go to bed early and get some rest.

On the other hand - if you want to see Burt in something that is actually worse than this bomb, try out "Big City Blues".

That one will really have you gagging.

It doesn't deserve a 1.

Hard Time 2 is easily the worst movie Burt Reynolds made. It is the second movie in a trilogy about Burt Reynolds playing Logan Mcqueen. And the worst one of the three movies. Well honestly the first was actually okay and the third was as bad as this. Anyway. The story is just plain stupid. Bruce Dern says he can predict murders. Burt Reynolds is just out of prison and tries to solve the murders Bruce Dern says he sees happening in advance. Sounds good? It's not. It's boring and predictable and the dialogue is laughably bad. The movie isn't meant to be as funny as it is but because the dialogue is so awful you laugh at every line. Burt Reynolds looks sad and tired and like he doesn't want to be in the movie. Bruce Dern overacts as usual. Small part actors and bad guys suck. Although Charles Durning is excellent even with the bad character writing. The movie looks like the company making it had no money to spend. Also like a two year old wrote it. And directed it. And the action scenes. Really bad. Burt Reynolds said in his book that he thought the movies in this series were good. Was he on drugs? Or drunk? Or did he not see the finished movies? Any of those three options is likely. Because this film sucks. Sorry Mr Reynolds.

A Burt Reynolds mad bomber mystery with a script that is severely under developed. Burt does however wear a nice assortment of hair pieces, as he tries to piece together several random bombings in Miami. Further complicating things is Bruce Dern, as a death row prisoner with premonitions of the bombings in his dreams, making the story extremely disjointed. Charles Durning is barely in the film, with small parts in the beginning and end. If you blink, you will miss Paul Bartel playing a hotel desk manager behind a cage. Essential to any deranged bomber screenplay is insight into the bomber's motivation. Here the motivation makes zero sense, and thus the movie itself becomes a "so what?" Unfortunately, "Hard Time the Premonition" is totally forgettable, even for Burt Reynolds fans. - MERK

Sloppy Burt Reynolds thriller about a man who receives a premonition of a terrorist attack and tries to stop the killer before it happens. At least that's what I heard before watching the movie. All I got was loads of cheap made-for-TV-style dialog, sex scenes and violence.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.