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All hail the mighty Hard Core Logo! A legend in Canadian punk music, HCL is getting back together one last time for a benefit for another punk legend, the great Bucky Haight, recently brought low by a freak with a shotgun who blew Bucky's lower legs clean off. Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon), HCL's contrary, unrepentant lead singer, has arranged this whole scene, dragging his bandmates out of retirement for this good work. Well, two of them are retired; one, the aptly-named Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), lead guitar player, has promised his good friend Joe that he'll come back from L.A., where he's just about to sign with big-name band Jenifur, for this one show, for old time's sake. Just a gathering of old friends, having a last hurrah before moving on to other, mostly less glorious, things.

The benefit, though, is such a success that Joe talks the band into a last tour - five shows spread out across the Canadian prairie, a little more time spent together, reliving HCL's glory days, playing real music, with no manager, no sponsor, just four guys in a van, on the road - the essence of a band. This is Joe's idea of paradise, and once he talks a reluctant Billy into it (after promises of actual hotel rooms booked, no sleeping in the van, five shows and out, I swear), it seems a done deal. With the addition of a film crew, originally slated to just film the benefit, but now co-opted into documenting HCL's last tour, the band sets out on the road.

All seems well at first, of course; typical band behavior, screwing with the drummer, teenage jokes and bad language, road games to while away the hours of driving across beautifully barren Canadian winterscapes, all pass the time. Then, inevitably, things start to go downhill. Drummer Pipefitter (Bernie Coulson), genial screw-up, is the 15-year-old loose without his parents, and on his worst behavior. Bassist John Oxenberger (John Pyper-Ferguson) loses the pills that keep him stable, and his voice-over narrations start to slide from smart observations to schizo-Shakespearean madman's rants. And a few phone calls from L.A. about Billy's future with Jenifur send the relationship between Joe and Billy into a spin, putting their intensely close history at odds with their very differing views of the future. Add in a film crew, a closed club, and a side-trip that reveals Bucky Haight's real condition, and four guys on a bus become four rats trapped in a cage, ripping at each other at every turn.

The core of the film is the relationship between Joe and Billy, which is laid out in a series of simple and well-played scenes between the two. Dillon and Rennie do an excellent job of being close friends, with all the love and cruelty that this kind of relationship can have. Dillon's Joe Dick is a man in love with hating the crap of the corporate music world, determined to save Billy from it, and thereby give himself a future. The fact that Dillon is a musician and not really an actor only makes him better in this role; he's perfectly believable as a passionate, self-centered rebel. Callum Rennie gives a great, complex performance as Billy, who is trying to get away from the deliberately self-destructive Joe and make something of himself, while realizing that will mean leaving part of himself behind. The interactions between Joe and Billy are exactly on the mark; they make this fake documentary feel real from the outset. Pyper-Ferguson's low-key Oxenberger slides downhill without seeming over-the-top or foolish, and emphasizes the uneasy feeling that starts to permeate the film. And Coulson does a good job at being just the simple guy who wants to have a little more fun before he goes back to being nothing; he's what Billy is too talented, Joe is too complex, and Oxenberger is too broken to be.

Director Bruce McDonald has placed himself in the film once again, as the documentary director, who deliberately manipulates events in order to both make a more interesting film, and to repay Joe and the others who heap punk-rock abuse on his status as passive observer. McDonald does a great job in this film, the third of his rock and roll road movie trilogy, of melding the metaphor of travel with the idea of a personal journey, and he does it so smoothly that at no point is the metaphor brought obviously to attention. The film plays like part documentary, part reality-tv show, where you know the director is making cuts and revealing information to set the story the way he wants. As the film goes on, Bruce-in-the-film's hand becomes more obvious, and it's interesting to see how he frames scenes to underline the treachery that is going on between the bandmates.

Despite the comparisons, this is not Spinal Tap, Canadian-style. It's not a parody, and though it's often funny, it's not a comedy. Hard Core Logo is closer to a real documentary, showing us how close being friends is to being enemies, and how one man's dream can easily be another man's destruction. Other than one acid-trip scene, this film feels real, for better and for worse, until the bitter end.

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originally posted: 04/04/02 15:07:47
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