A couple of years before winning a Best Actor Oscar for The Pianist, Adrien Brody played another artist trying to survive in a hellish city in Peter Sehr’s Love the Hard Way. It’s a performance that had until this belated, opportunistic release sunk into deserved obscurity.

Jack Grace (Brody) runs a scam in New York City with his orphanage pal Charlie (Jon Seda) in which they send in their call girls to hook up with rich out-of-towners and then, disguised as vice cops, shake the johns down. He also collects antique books and writes a bad crime novel on the side. For these reasons, or maybe it’s his cockatoo haircut, Jack thinks he’s irresistible to women, so he hits on virginal Claire (Charlotte Ayanna), a concessionaire at a local movie theater and a straight-A pre-med student. Dazzled by such lines as "I’ve slept with over 200 women," Claire falls for Jack and enthusiastically journeys to "the dark side of the moon," with predictable results.

Sehr tries to soup up this stale adaptation of Chinese author Wang Shuo’s novel with self-conscious montages, hip-hop music, and the campy presence of Pam Grier (she comes off as a cross between RuPaul and Whoopi Goldberg) as a police detective. But to judge from Love, Brody earned his success the hard way. (104 minutes)