The Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell and co-written by Trevor D. Rhone, and starring Jimmy Cliff. The film is most famous for its reggae soundtrack that is said to have "brought reggae to the world".
Enormously successful in Jamaica, the film also reached the international market and has been described as "possibly the most influential of Jamaican films and one of the most important films from the Caribbean".Synopsis
Ivanhoe "Ivan" Martin is a poor Jamaican man in search of a job. He leaves his rural home, after his grandmother dies, to live with his impoverished mother in Kingston. He meets Jose, who takes him to see a Spaghetti Western. Excited by urban life, he tries to get work but fails. He finally gets a job after taking a broken bicycle frame and rebuilding it into a working bicycle, and uses it to run errands for a record producer. When the frame's original owner insists that it is still "his" bicycle, the two fight, and Ivan slashes him with a knife for which crime he is sentenced to a whipping.
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