Simple Men
by Hal Hartley
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bill Sage, Elina L?wensohn, Karen Sillas, Martin Donovan (II), Robert John BurkeDirector: Hal Hartley
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Image Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Simple Men
Movie Review: Pretentious Drivel
Summary: 1 Stars
Two brothers go on a road-trip to find their on-the-lam anarchist father and in the process meet an assortment of odd characters.
"Simple Men" is possibly the most pretentious films I have ever seen. I watched this film to the end in the hope of finding something that resembled a plot but was sorely disappointed. All that happened was a bunch of characters, that I cared very little about, said a lot of things that I think were intended to be deep and profound but which I found to be meaningless.
This is not my first Hal Hartley film. I had previously seen "Henry Fool", which I loved. However, whereas "Henry Fool" actually had something to say (and was pretty funny too), "Simple Men" is just pretentious drivel. If you must watch one of Hartley's films, watch "Henry Fool" instead.
Summary of Simple Men
What do you do if your father, a former all-star shortstop and mad bomber anarchist, breaks out of jail? Go after him, of course! Two brothers trek through the deep, dark wilds of Long Island, only to discover that sometimes even the oddest things really are just what they seem. Directed by independent film favorite Hal Hartley (The UnbelievableTruth, Amateur, Trust) Starring Robert John Burke (Tombstone, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), Bill Sage (American Psycho, Boiler Room), Karen Sillas (The Sopranos, CSI Miami), Elina Lowensohn (Schindler's List, Nadja), and Martin Donovan (Insomnia, The Opposite of Sex).Simple Men opens with small-time hood Bill (Robert Burke from RoboCop 3) asking a bound and blindfolded security guard if he can have the guard's Virgin Mary medallion. "Be good to her and she'll be good to you," says the guard. Immediately after, Bill is double-crossed by his girlfriend and his partner. From there, the plot goes off in a completely different direction: Bill and his younger brother Dennis (William Sage, High Art), a philosophy student, go off in search of their father, a former star shortstop who may have committed a bombing many years ago. Their only clue is a phone number on Long Island; they end up at a cafe run by Kate (Karen Sillas, Female Perversions), which is also the hangout for Elina L?wensohn (Nadja) and Martin Donovan (Hollow Reed, The Opposite of Sex). But plot is never the point in Hal Hartley movies (Trust, Amateur, Henry Fool); it's just a clothesline on which to hang odd, quirky scenes--moments like Donovan and Sage trying to imitate L?wensohn's dance movements to a Sonic Youth song, or a half-drunken conversation about pop music and self-exploitation. Hartley's deliberately stilted dialogue and stylized performances actually play better on video; the movie feels more intimate, making the humor more relaxed and fluid. Hartley is the kind of idiosyncratic filmmaker who provokes love-him-or-hate-him responses, but there's a deep sincerity to his artifice that goes beyond mere posing. Against all commercial wisdom, he's struggling to find his own cinematic poetry. Such an uncommon aspiration is worth checking out. --Bret Fetzer
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