ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Konterr Brilliant and touching

HomeyTao For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Freewheelinautomator ... about the American b-movies of the 90's that isn't exactly placeable anywhere. my own very young background is literary with movies as adiaphora, but it's a damn necessary one if today's society is to be at all comprehensible (which even then doesn't insure us of its comprehensibility for all that). the movie reviewed is a mish-mash of emotion, all misdirected, but sure as hell standing in their own right; that is, as open to ridicule. an honest look, however, at the 'private' life of modernity rarely entails one linear chain of events, affects, that can be deduced 'logically'. confusion is not only permitted and encouraged, but sustained throughout its madness, meaning as banished as the howls of the afflicted discordant and the 'possibilities' being presented are using us for its own instrumental reason without ever including our 'human potential', so why not put in the breaks and vegetate? seems to be the message of modern-day cynicism. sure as bunkers, you can't either blame or pity these neo-nihilists, put in their rightful place by a society all-too-much-like a Russia of the late 19th century. a simple "no" is not the truth but at the same time not an "affirmative" of what you in your heart of hearts suspect of untruth (covered up with courteous witty banter). there is no hypocrisy in such play-acting, but even those who refuse to intellectualize (don't believe in any form of "rationalization" whatsoever) and give way to the scurvy feelings and blurry outlines of their being, vaporize the untruth of a society as well as any truth makes its intellectual form ever. the one is descriptive, the other normative. this movie portrays how most human relationships are actually played out from beginning to end and it should give rise to wonder, if not awe, in humility. the sheer bulk of madness transforms itself before our very eyes into an intelligible quality, which we begin to fear. i'm willing to go as far as to say it's cathartic, but in the modern sense, which, unlike tragedy, doesn't anesthetize your defeature with a supplementary cord of meaning. as always, it's the raw fact of death that shines a light on life and serves as the usual wake-up call for the lazy 'human'. (jolie is great, by the way)

dogatemyhomework I don't normally write reviews on here, but after seeing that nearly all of them praised the movie, I couldn't in all good conscience keep quiet. So, here we go:Who gave Tony Cinciripini a budget? Surely they'd read the script before handing over the money! This film is quite gob-smacking in its incompetence. The dialogue is so horrendous that none of actors have the slightest chance to even remotely act (with the exception of Arquette who's allowed to do the drug-addict thing, and Jolie who's allowed to angrily cry on two occasions). The plot is utter nonsense – it could make sense if it was an 8-hour miniseries that not only allows you to get to know the characters but also gives the film a chance to have something akin to pace. However, at just over 1½ hours, this lack of pace and runtime means we get horribly jarring shifts from an emotional scene to sex to bonding to someone waving around a gun with nothing in between. Add to that some wholly inappropriate music (don't have slow, moody pieces during action scenes!) and an editor who has found the slow motion button but doesn't know when to use it, and we have a full-on car crash of a film. The entire onus has to be on the director / writer. He wrote the terrible dialogue then obviously told the actors how to play it, a large part of which is that if you're not the one talking you have to freeze in place and don't do the slightest thing that might distract them from remembering their lines. Oh, and let's forget about such things as explanation – towards the end (SPOILER) Jolie's character does the following: dumps Patty, apologises to Johnny for wanting to kill him, argues with Liz, tells Johnny she's pregnant with his baby. Erm...what? How did that suddenly happen? A more pertinent question would be – how did any of this happen? Only Arquette was even remotely famous back then, so you can't say that it got released purely on the merits of starring Angelina Jolie. For this film to get made in the first place defies belief. Uwe Boll, Jalal Merhi and Edward D Wood Jr would all tie for The Most Incompetent Director award for sheer consistency, but as an individual prize, I'd have to award it to Tony for this.

niceguyeddy I have always been intrigued with the acting skills of Mekhi Phifer ever since Spike Lee's brilliant Clockers, that's why I remotely enjoyed this film. The cast all around gave good preformances. The problem with it was definetly the way it was filmed and a contadictory message. Actually, there was no message at all, or else it was one burried in clichés. It was exactly like every other "New York-former-gangster" movie, and it had nothing special going for it (as apposed to Clockers, which had a whole underlying plot line to it). No message about Hell's Kitchen at all. This movie was pure mediocracy.C-

reelmartin I found this movie to be solidly entertaining. I was fascinated by the character of Johnny Miller. This was a guy surrounded by ugliness who, with one misstep, could have been consumed by it. However, simply by being who he was and doing what he knew to be right he redeemed himself and those around him. A lot of people in the world would do well to follow his example, and I hope a lot of people will see this movie and enjoy it.