Hard Times

“New Orleans, 1933. In those days words didn't say much.”

Chaney (Charles Bronson) rides freight trains through Louisiana in the Depression, a quiet drifter who gets paid to fight with his bare hands. In New Orleans he teams up with Speed (James Coburn), a talkative hustler who borrows the money to set up the bouts and gambles away whatever they win. Walter Hill's debut treats the fights as a job, where hard times leave a man little to sell but his body.