UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

zkonedog You know how, sometimes, when the whole family gets together, it always seems to end in a shouting match or someone walking out in a huff? Family dynamics are some of the trickiest situations to deal with, and "Death of a Salesman" taps into those themes better than perhaps any other film.For a basic plot summary, this movie tells the story of Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman), an aging salesman who may be starting to get a bit senile. Not helping matters is that, after decades of service to his company, he is being pushed out and unable to pay the bills. When Willy's sons Biff (John Malkovich) and Happy (Stephen Lang) come home after failing at their life's pursuits, they only ignite Willy's frustrations even more. Thrown in accommodating wife Linda (Kate Reid) and let the fireworks begin.When watching this movie, the first thing you have to do is remember that it is adapted from a stage play, and it plays that way on the big screen. They don't try to "pump it up" for Hollywood, but instead still rely on slight set pieces like a stage play would. It isn't "bad effects", but a conscious choice by director Volker Schlondorff.What the film lacks in visual effects, though, it more than makes up for with acting and themes. Hoffman and Malkovich play off each other perfectly, and this movie throws so many family- dynamic themes at you that it will take you some time even after the movie is finished to truly absorb and understand all of them.This is the kind of movie that doesn't lend itself to a brief review because one could take an entire semester of a college class and still not dissect all the themes. Suffice it to say, though, that you WILL relate to at least one of the characters (or know someone who IS one of them) and most of the family themes. Some movies are all about "black and white" themes of good and bad, but "Death of a Salesman" revels in its shades of grey.Though this movie is not "dramatized" enough for me to warrant a five-star rating, it is about as solid a four star movie as I've ever seen. The themes will leave you thinking about the movie for days afterwards.

SnoopyStyle Struggling traveling salesman Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman) returns home to his loving wife Linda (Kate Reid). His former football star son Biff (John Malkovich) has returned home after failing in the outside world. His younger son Happy (Stephen Lang) worships his older brother. In contrast, his neighbor Charley (Charles Durning) raised successful nerdy son Bernard. His dead older brother Ben became a diamond tycoon from nothing and his ideal American dream. His boss Howard Wagner fires him despite his years of service.The style is strip down minimalist. It faithfully does the Arthur Miller play. Its greatness comes from the terrific Hoffman performance. The rest of cast is no slouch. It's TV doing high class American culture and doing it well. Honestly, high school kids studying the play should watch this.

cyclerrollie This movie is just plain awful! Sure it moves from scene to scene seamlessly, but there's a crap load of what seems like unnecessary information stuffing it to the gills. Most of the last hour or so of the movie is the characters screaming at each other until Willy starts hallucinating, sending his life downhill and further out of control until he takes his car and kills himself.It was a chore to watch this movie, and it was very disappointing. The only things that lighten it up are John Malkovich's acting and the occasional funny scene. Other than that, it's just a bunch of yelling, fighting, and general dementia. Don't waste your time watching this movie

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU I will not insist on the plot which is so well-known that to ignore it is a proof of incompetent a-social behavior. I will insist here on the performance of Dustin Hoffman, hence on the particular rendition of this play that is kept as a play with real sound stages like in the old days of the thirties or forties. Dustin Hoffman makes this Willy Loman a lot worse than I was used to read it. He is shown, and as soon as his prime, at least, when his sons are in high school, some seventeen years before, he is shown was I saying as a completely paranoid and deranged person. Not deranged because of some kind of gene. But deranged because first of all he got and kept a job even when he was failing, though he was not done for that job. A salesman has to be a born hypocrite and has to be a conqueror: any argument is good provided it brings in the proper signature. So he is rather misplaced and his derangement comes from that misplacement. What's more he was discovered in his total hypocrisy, though in no way commercial and hence unacceptable from the salesmanship point of view since this woman was bringing him nothing but was costing him a lot, by his own son who was coming after him to get the help he needed, but a help that could only be effective if it were based on the truth, truthfulness, confidence, trust. And Willy Loman was lower than low at that moment. It threw his son into some totally absurd and paranoid a-social attitude, a derangement of its own due to the misplacement of his trust in his own father. When that trust was placed back where it belonged, that is to say in the trashcan, the son only had his eyes to cry, his fingers to steal, his flesh to suffer, in prison if necessary. This film pushes the character of Willy Loman slightly too far and his derangement explains then his suicide: he completely lost control of himself. But I would assert the idea that this is not true of that character who in fact commits suicide when he discovers and finally understands that he had not forgotten that silly episode of his son discovering him in the cradle of the revolution with another woman than his mother. I would like to believe that this last act in his life is not the result of his derangement but of his last flash of guilt for having failed and cheated so many people, in a word a suicide of divine justice coming from the last flash of consciousness of that man who might have been able to be anything but a loser. Even if I disagree with the vision of Schlondorff, I must say the rendering of the character, the acting of the actor and at times the overbearing-ness of the over-acting of the actor is absolutely remarkable and logical and of one piece from beginning to end. That man is not old. That man is not worn out. That man is not vain. That man is not a perambulating lie. That man is sick in his head, crazy, deranged to the extreme point of insanity and thus extremely dangerous since he projects his hatred of that unbearable situation onto everyone around him, even, and particularly, those who love him.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID