American Buffalo (1996)

Very well executed

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

From the 1975 play, "common" people spout philosophy and psychology in street slang. By attributing middle-class "hang-ups" like greed, paranoia and vanity to "losers," Mamet dramatizes "our" similarity to "them" (we all have our investment "bubbles") and vice versa. Luckily for the audience, this is done within the context of a deceptively simple (if we can piece it together from the fragmented conversations) crime story (touches of O. Henry) and some uniquely funny dialog and situations. Good acting, esp Nelson. In a recent interview, Arthur Miller had decried how difficult it had become to be a "serious" Broadway playwright. Apparently Mamet saw the "writing" on the wall and turned to screenplays, and has managed to appeal to a sufficiently wide audience. Many writers have been less successful at that transition, as satirized in "Barton Fink."

When two low life dirtbags see an easy score they spent many worrisome hours figuring out how to run the game. So engrossed were they in their greed that they were unable to look at the score with any degree on intelligent planning. Hoffman's character was a particularly odious goof totally unable to consider anything but a speedy, easy job. Crazy film; thumbs up.

Watching this film on screen and on stage (I imagine) wouldn't be a hell of a lot different. It's still a 3-character film that revolves around the same setting--most of the time. But when you see great acting like this, how can you complain?? Dustin Hoffman is great at whatever he does, and he's perfectly believable as the foul-mouthed Teach. He has some of the greatest lines. My favorite is "Guys like that, I'd like to f**k their wives." He is rude and obnoxious with barely a sympathetic quality, but he's the guy you love to hate. I just recently started watching "NYPD Blue" and just from watching a few episodes, I can say that Dennis Franz is one of the best actors I've ever seen. He deserves to be on the big screen a lot more, because he has abilities as an actor that only few TV actors also possess. He delivers every line and every emotion with such power that your eyes are wide open with amazement every minute he's on screen. Even young actor (I assume he's now in his late teens) Sean Nelson is perfectly cast, blowing me away with a performance I'm sure very few young actors can pull off just as effectively. He only has about 20 or 30 minutes of screen time, yet he's the character you most feel sorry for at times, despite the fact that he lives an unclean life, dealing with thugs and earning his money via dishonest methods. You can just sense that he didn't have any parental leadership, and he wasn't sure what path in life to take, so he took the most easy one--and also the most dangerous one. In a way, the two guys are like his surrogate parents. I've never seen the play, but when I see the name "David Mamet" under the writing credits, I immediately know that I'm gonna hear some priceless dialogue. I don't know how he does it, but he just has a relentlessly quick wit when it comes to creating dialogue. Like a play, this movie is composed of 80 % dialogue, but the dialogue is so great that I don't really care if there's no exciting visuals. And last but no least, I loved the opening and closing theme song. It just has that grungy quality that perfectly fits the tone of "American Buffalo." If you're a fan of superb acting, this will be a real treat! A real treat! My score: 8 (out of 10)

Your average movie goer will not enjoy this film. With a small cast of three main characters, the majority of the film takes place in a single room. This alone may explain why the film never took off as the blockbuster it should have been with actors such as Dennis Franz and Dustin Hoffman. The direction of the film could have been much better that it turned out to be. Like other critics have said, the film was shot like it was being acted on stage. This is very true. The film has no unique directing style nor does it have any strong motif to add to the films creative look and style. The acting in the film, on the other hand, is wonderful. Franz and Hoffman are excellent together. With a stronger movie maker in the director's chair, the movie could have been much much better.