Is it just me...

Give it a break. It was made in a third-world country, after all. It's not supposed to be the second coming of "The Maltese Falcon", but it's an incredible slice-of-life from early-70s Jamaica. If you try to compare it to the best high-budget American films from the same period, of course it's going to come up short.

Just cut them up like regular chickens.

I agree, it is overrated, so much I was compelled to review it, which I never do. I had to force myself to keep watching at points. I gave it a 4/10. And it's nowhere as good as some blaxploitation flicks like Superfly, Shaft or even Black Caesar.

Yes, it is just you. This incredible film is exactly as it should be: rough, raw, and in your face.

[deleted]

Seriously?

People are calling this exploitation / blaxploitation?
People are comparing this to Shaft or Superfly?

Blaxploitation was a version of Exploitation cinema, and like most exploitation cinema, invented by white people. Basicly it comes down to this: exploitation cinema 'exploits' every cheesy film aspect it can find: guns, crime, cars, women, zombies, or whatever, and crams as much as possible of it in one film for pure entertainment value. At one point people thought "Hey, what about if we make these kinda films with black people? We'll have a whole new subgenre, and cater to a whole new target audience." That's basicly the story of blaxploitation films.
Don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion; it became pretty popular (not in the last place amongst white people by the way). I enjoy that genre like I enjoy all other exploitation films.

But if you want to compare The Harder They Come to anything, Scarface (either the 1932 or the 1983 version) would be more applicable in my opinion.
THTC is a crime story based on a real life person, and it touches real world problems like drug trade, poverty, police corruption, that were present then (and probably still) in Jamaica. Although the film features violence and drugs, there's not nearly as much of it and it's not nearly as cheesy or over the top as it would be if THTC would be an exploitation flick. Frankly, the only similarity with blaxploitation is that the cast is all black people. :S

As a film, it may not be Oscar material, but so many films aren't, and as someone mentioned earlier it was made in what was then a third wirld country, not exactly famous for it's film industry. Personally, I think it's a good film, and I think the average 7.0 it has on IMDb is deserved. I think the pacing is just fine, although like all older films, it's a little slower than films nowadays but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Someone wrote they had to push themselves to keep watching... seriously I don't know how that happened and I wonder if it's fair to blame that on the film. If the film was that bad, it wouldn't still be watched 40 years later and have a 7 on IMDb.

I also saw someone write "if it was any good they would have made a Hollywood version of it". Well, Scarface comes to mind, although technically that was a remake of the 1932 one. ;) But THTC is important on a much bigger level; this may be one of the first films where black people were portrayed as complex characters. And that for a film from an 'outside' (non-Hollywood) source.

No.