Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

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

MortalKombatFan1 Cassavetes' Husbands is at times exciting, at times funny, can a bit boring and authentically real in dealing with its three central characters, played by John Cassavetes (Gus), Peter Falk (Archie), and Ben Gazara (Harry).The opening scene where they go to the funeral of their friend - who died in his forties or a heart attack - and their subsequent all day and night drinking binge usually would give us some clear insight into these characters. Typical movies would have one of them state about making up for lost time, and the feeling they have for their lost friend. It sort of happens in the movie, but not stated so obviously. Each of the three men act out on a childish whim, and never really express themselves to each other underneath their male posturing and childish antics. In the bar scene that follows, they get into a drinking game and everyone sings (the wake where everyone shares something positive about the deceased is skipped). After Gazarra's theatrical singing, a woman starts to sing, but is berated by him to sing with more passion. This goes on for a very long time, and then his friends go on to belittle her and bully as well. The scene is prolonged to go from funny to uncomfortable and back again, but our sympathy for the characters never permanently changes.   The reasons why characters act out is never clear in the movie to us, and I don't think to them, either. You cam never tell when the performers are being genuine or playing "roles" around each other. When the three are in the bathroom, throwing up in the stalls, Gazarra shows some vulnerability, but then ends up yelling at his friends, the other two not really listening. He calls them out on acting like children later on, but hypocritically acts that way himself. We don't see Gus' wife in the movie, or Archie's. Harry's wife is divorcing him, and their separation could be the source of his occasionally anguished strife. His fight with his wife and mother in law over wanting to see his kids is raw and earnest, but also a little ridiculous.Most of the scenes follow this trend of muddled uncertainty, which can leave the viewer exhausted from having to be around these three men who seem incapable of articulating themselves without damaging those around them. We don't judge them based on the filmmaker's point of view, we just observe (like a documentary, but without the imposition of trying to tell a story)."Husbands" is a demanding work, but rewarding for the virtuosic acting from the ensemble cast. Just don't expect any resolutions or neatly expressed ideas.

treywillwest I'm tempted to review this as two different movies, not because the film's different acts don't flow into each other naturally, but simply because the first third of the film is, I think, so superior to the rest. The first forty minutes or so of Husbands (of the shortened version currently available on DVD in the US) is as fine, if not better, than anything else Cassavetes ever made. The funeral sequence and that at the pub with the singing of songs, is brilliant cinema. The shadow of death and loss is palpable, and the sense of drunken overcompensation can be felt by anyone who has ever, well, overcompensated through drinking. I do not think of Cassavetes as a great visual filmmaker, but some of the compositions in the bar room scene made me think of Rembrandt, with its dark hues giving way to such revealing faces. That these heads are confronted with, what in the composition amount to, disembodied hands makes this seem like Rembrandt in the age of surrealism. Regrettably, after these magical 40 or so minutes, the film then degenerates into all that I think worst about Cassavetes's oeuvre. The crudest male bonding is celebrated as liberational. Indeed, one of the most grotesque of patriarchal tropes gets wheeled out: the woman who gets abused by a man and then falls in love with her attacker. (That the perpetrator is played by Cassavetes himself makes this seem all the more off-putting.) The last couple of scenes are a memorably bleak portrayal of American suburbia, but this is compromised by the fact that we are only allowed to identify with the supposedly "put-upon" masters of this world: the white patriarchy.

gavin6942 A common friend's sudden death brings three men, married with children, to reconsider their lives and ultimately leave together. But mindless enthusiasm for regained freedom will be short-lived.This film brings together John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk as actors on one screen. No other film has this trio, and here we have it in spades. That alone makes the film worth watching, because the way these guys interact is quite fun to watch.Critic Jay Cocks wrote, "Husbands may be one of the best movies anyone will ever see. It is certainly the best movie anyone will ever live through." He described it as an important and great film, and as Cassavetes' finest work. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, disliked the film greatly (despite being a Cassavetes fan in general) and Pauline Kael described the movie as "infantile and offensive."

catherine_stebbins Cassavettes has a lot to say about men, the way they cling to standard forms of masculinity as a rebellion of their voluntary marriage and the various ways they connect with each other and with women, usually through extended humiliation and embarrassment. Unfortunately, while the director has many intriguing things to say about manhood, they are buried within a two and a half hour film that is intent on being redundant, repetitive, lost and obnoxious. Peter Falk, John Cassavettes and Ben Gazzara star as three friends whose common friend has just died. This throws them into an existential funk consisting of drinking, humiliating women and laughing with one another. All three of them are varying degrees of asshole. Even trying to pick one who has any redeeming qualities is a waste of time.There is a lot to admire here which makes its failure al the more unfortunate. An extended scene near the beginning which lasts about 20 minutes involving a singing contest and the last part of the film which examines each man's interaction with a women they pick up. Most of the material in between fails to say anything substantial about their plight outside of the fact that they are each desperately lonely and use their lack of identity as an excuse to treat others terribly. This could have been conveyed in half the time. The three actors fill two and a half hours with constant laughter. Husbands tramples on its own potential through its own redundancy and inability to say anything substantial about its three protagonists. Perhaps this was the point but it was not working for me.