Edmond
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Movie Reviews of Edmond
Movie Review: Not what you would expect from the box...
Summary: 3 Stars
I rented this film on a whim because it sounded interesting and had a decent cast for an indie. It's not a bad movie but I must be clear that it is marketed all wrong.
First of all it is called a "sexy-thriller". This right away is wrong. The movie plods along with very specific slow pacing, music, and scenes. It was designed to be slightly disjointed and a little awkward but even in scenes of violence there is little pulse. As for sexy? Well Richards and Suvari barely have 2 lines each even though they are prominant on the box cover and Bai Ling does a strip tease which kills another 2 minutes of screen time. Most of the sexiness is Macy just walking around a red light district looking at posters and ads. Also by about the midway point, maybe even earlier, the film turns on it's head a bit and obviously sexiness or even blatant sex has little to do with it. Also why in the world is a gun on the front cover??? Unless I missed something that gun or any gun really was never part of any scene in the entire movie.
Over all the story is interesting if not a little flimsy and lacking some depth beyond the middle aged man losing his grip angel. Some of the dialogue has some unique plot but mostly the film is Macy walking around telling people they are charging him too much money. After a while it is obvious he has lost his mind a bit but the director really slams it home so by films end you will be tired of his psychotic ramblings. There was some humor involved and I did enjoy that.
Overall I think I would have enjoyed this film more had the marketing been accurate. It is a slow drama not a sexy thriller.
Movie Review: Different kind of thriller
Summary: 3 Stars
Anyone who has seen David Mamet's work, knows that this writer is very complex. Seemingly racist or superficial dialog(s), always lead to a climatic ending. Although I have never seen "Edmond" as a play, the film definitely feels more like a play than a film. Quick dialogs and brief encounters lead us to a dramatic change in a life of a middle aged dilusional man. Edmond is 47 year old professional who suddenly realizes that he is bored with his life, his wife and work. On a whim, he decides to leave it all and pursue a search for higher self. The women who could give him excitement he is looking for, are all for hire (ladies of the night) and apparently - according to Edmond - they cost too much. Which tells us that Edmond was either married for too long, or "born yesterday". In the course of one night, Edmond's life changes completely. In the end, he is in place and time where he manages to: have time to meditate on purpose of (his) life, get over his prejudices (racial and otherwise) and finally break away from the boredom what was haunting him thru the last several years of his marriage. The end of this unusual thriller is worth ending several overbearing moments we are forced to go thru in the course of the movie. This just may be one of those controversial movies that general public will love to hate.Movie Review: Interesting Irony
Summary: 3 Stars
Mamet's EDMOND offeres an interesting irony: Edmond, played wonderfully by William H. Macy, is dis-satisfied with his life, bored. A card-reader tells Edmond he's in the wrong place, so he leaves his wife and begins a search for fulfillment. But Edmond's on the wrong track: he wanders from frustration to frustration feeling as if he's the only one who is sane. Edmond's rambling monologues show a mind rapidly dissembling, until he commits the ultimate act and must pay the consequences. And then comes the irony... Well, at least Edmond is no longer bored.
This is an interesting concept, but the dialogue is clipped and wooden, except that is for the rants of Edmond. The movie's a bit slow moving, but interesting all the same.
Movie Review: disturbing
Summary: 3 Stars
ok people, this is one dark and disturbing film. i'm kind of caught in the middle of a like/hate issue with this movie. Good performances from all involved. subject matter was disturbing and brutally delivered. if you are easily offended by racist and sexist language. you will do well to skip this movie as it is all of that and more. but you have to give it up to william macey, that man can act.Movie Review: Tasteless and Trying
Summary: 2 Stars
I love me some Mamet. His dialogue takes some getting used to, since it is crafted so as to touch on the edges of realism while inhabiting a more stylistic realm. I also love his dedication to his actors, employing the same ones over and over, so that his movies come off as different shows performed by the same theatrical troupe, which may very well be his point.
However, Edmond is the first Mamet film to leave me disappointed and, worse, annoyed.
Macy plays Edmond with typical wide-eyed aplomb. Edmond is a man who is weak, but is valiantly (if not clumsily) trying to be strong. The movie starts with a chance encounter with a fortune teller whose tarot card reading provides a cinematic outline for the remainder of the film. Edmond then goes home, breaks up with his wife, and goes on a deaf, dumb, and blind search for himself, finding instead over-priced whores, pimps who are not-what-they-seem, and -- generally -- everything but himself.
I get the point: Edmond is the epitome of modern man's emasculation, unable to find his own balls with both hands, and his tawdry and panicked search through New York for some unnameable salvation is an example of the lengths anyone must go (man or woman) to find, if not redemption, then the places where one "belongs."
There are a lot of problems here. Most superficially, there's one of packaging. The DVD box prominently features a picture of a gun, and no gun appears in the film. The tags on the box call the film, alternately, a mystery and a fast-paced thriller, when it is neither one of those things. Not even close. This movie is (like most of Mamet's work) based on a play; never before has it been more obvious (unless you count the absolutely brilliant Oleanna).
Edmond is, essentially, a one-man show, with Macy delivering numbing and rambling monologues, stopped only occasionally to engage in awkward and almost meaningless side action with ancillary characters (some of them played well -- Denise Richards actually shines in her brief scene as a hooker -- and some of them not so well -- Julia Stiles seems over-medicated in her role as an ambivalent and easily persuaded waitress). In spite of how they do and don't help Edmond make his way through the tunnel of decadence and misery he creates for himself, most of these characters seem disposable, making the movie come across as equally dismissable. (I would also like to take a moment here to make a small observation about Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet's wife, an actress who appears, I think, in every single one of her husband's films: this woman is, viewed in even the nicest of lights, one of the worst actresses I've ever seen, and she sucks the life out of every scene she's in. In this movie she plays Edmond's wife, and does so with heartless and uninspired vehemence. It's nice that Mamet gives his wife the opportunities he does, but one has to wonder if she'd ever get any acting work at all if she weren't married to such a famous writer/director).
At the risk of spoiling the film, I will say that, at the end, Edmond finally does find where he "belongs," a place that, given his previous struggles, makes a lot of sense (although the manner in which he finds this belonging might offend more than a few viewers). But this is small consolation since, by this time, few people are likely to have any sympathy for Edmond or where he ends up. His character's slap-dash personality combined with the persistent and mostly meaningless monologues on fate, fear, destiny and (ironically) meaning make for a benumbing and distasteful cinematic experience. A few good performances and some nice, visceral cinematography do not save this film from its plot and the dialogue that fails to move that plot along. Avoid this flick; try Oleanna or Glen Gary Glenross instead.