RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

inioi Excellent movie.This film shows that people who lives in the underworld of poverty in big cities.But it does so from a realistic and dramatic view. The characters are well portrayed.The plot is simple, and unfortunately close to reality. One of the virtues of the movie is that it is not overloaded with elements to increase the drama. life is shown as it is.Good direction, The soundtrack score by J.Newton Howard fits perfectly to the film .The acting is also at good level with Danny Glover and Matt Dillon8/10

rev66 I encountered this movie on a dreary, rainy day and after watching it for about 10 minutes, it thoroughly sucked me in. It is fascinating portrayal of the plight of the homeless. a problem that effects nearly a million people in this country. If you really are concerned about humanity, I strongly suggest it. It seems that there is a "void" in Hollywood to tackle social problems, but this attempt hits the nail on the head. It gave me the thought that we take so much for granted in our lives, while we ignore many issues which profoundly effect others. It doesn't pull any punches, and there are few, if any, cliché's.... Danny Glover, Matt Dillon and a strong supporting cast are superb, and the location shooting is impressive. Don't pass this one up.

alicecbr You and I can usually put the homeless out of our minds. It is said that if you truly felt the misery of the homeless, you would go mad. I could not watch this movie all the way through at one sitting, but had to take it in increments. You know tragedy will occur, as though the wasted lives of the hundreds of vagabonds, mentally ill and veterans on the street isn't itself a crime.As someone who sometimes serves the homeless at the Arlington Street Church in Boston, I know these people. They act like the software engineers I work with 'so long as they are on their 'meds''. That we are so savage a society that we no longer take upon ourselves the obligation to do good to the helpless, to house them as we did in a more civilized time, that's just one of the many signs of our downfall as a society.No preaching in this movie, however. Danny Glover's and Matt Dillon's eyes tell it all. I think one reason we have so many humanitarian actors is because they have to play the roles of the downtrodden and in doing so, become empathetic with them. Since many writers, musicians, actors were blacklisted or attacked for their heroic stands, they know the hurt of the mob or bullying police themselves.Dillon and Glover went out on the streets and lived among these denizens of the sewers, these reminders that we have regressed to Dickens' time. The complicity of the Shelter police in the beating and murder is something that will make you retch, as the sharks of the night rob the other homeless of their pennies, armed with knives that somehow get through the metal detectors. You have no reason NOT to believe the various anecdotes that emerge, from the retarded couple and their pregnancy to the old man with the arthritic fingers, sharing his soup to the Vietnam vet with shrapnel still in his knees, screaming in pain when his drugs give out. The sharing of the homeless with the others in the same state is something that few of us in the 'burbs will ever do,You keep thinking something beatific will happen as the boy has visions of a happy life in glorious Technicolor, but the drab colors of the mean streets of New York remind you that it's all in his head. YOu will never pass up another street hustler with his roses on Mass Ave., trying for a few bucks to ease whatever horrors brought him to this place in life. YOu will want to open wide your home to every vagrant in the Pine Street Inn.. Yet fear will stop you: fear that some will be as the murderous hustlers of the night in those shelters. You understand why some of those you serve dinner to won't be caught dead in a shelter, for fear they WILL be.The city of New York aided in filming this important movie, which should be shown to every HIstory class, every Sociology class and to every recruit thinking he will return to Glory when his time in Iraq is over. They're already joining the Vietnam vets in homelessness, as this movie shows.The most horrible scene is the movie however, shown so poignantly and understatedly by Dillon, is when he tries to return home after his slum apartment is razed. His mother has moved to Florida, and left the key with a neighbor who refuses to let him in his 'family home' in the Bronx. You have no understanding for how a mother can desert her mentally ill child......the joke is made painfully real. "My folks left while I was out and left no forwarding address." For the first time in my long life, I visit a Potter's Field and am told "There is no funeral." They are buried in a mass grave, each in a wooden box. Even as we are shown the box, the photos left as a memorial blow away, leaving no trace of that human being's individuality, his genius. Having met many intelligent, well-educated homeless whose shell is too brittle to bear the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', I wonder how we in this country dare call ourselves 'civilized'. Yet I remember the admonishment in my training in Clearwater, when i volunteered to help out at a church's homeless shelter: "Don't ever think you can change them, can make their lives right again. You can only serve them where they are." This movie makes even more clear why the homeless man snapped at me, as I whistled while cleaning up the mats in the morning: "What are you so happy about?" Maybe he knew what I didn't: I was whistling because I wasn't him. Great movie, but for God's sake, don't ignore what you take from it. Dillon and Glover punch up the point: There but for the grace of God go I. No wonder this movie wasn't 'popular'. It points the finger right at you and me, for the injustice we do to these, the helpless.

Karl Ericsson There are some people, who don't manage to make the american dream, because they are not 'good' enough when it comes to cheating your fellow man of his money or somehow lie yourself to the top. In old Germany there was a saying: "And even if the business is ever so small it still gives you more than honest work."And then there are some people who find market economy offensive, find all business offensive and deeply immoral and who therefor are unable in 'making it'.And then there are some who have gifts, which are of a kind, that they simply do not fit in in this abomination we call the 'free world' and that world hits down on them real hard and it seems that world wants to rot out every bit of decency that is left amongst mankind.A society is not measured by how it treats it most rich and powerful people. If so, there would be no difference between countries, since the most rich and powerful are having a fine time in any society today.A society is measured by how it treats its misfits, the most powerless and poor.Take a look in the mirror that this picture shows and 'SHAME ON YOU' if you ever mingle carefree and clueless amongst the idle rich.This picture you see in the mirror of this film can only lead to shame amongst all of us, who are lucky enough not to belong to these miserable people. No place for fancy rationalizations here. Those who do not want or cannot belong to our sick world of business, we have no right to treat this way. A minimum of decency should be given everyone. Are we so sure, that we can do without them? Is it not so, that there is more chance to find somebody amongst them, who can lead us out from this graveyard we are digging, than there is a chance to find that somebody in the likes of the present president? Is there not more truth amongst these homeless than you will find on any dinner-party?I just ask.