Product Details

• Actors: Jesse Jackson, Juan Munoz, Ray Rogers, Mike Kinney
• Directors: Barbara Kopple
• Producers: Barbara Kopple, Arthur Cohn
• Format: NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Miramax Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: January 6, 2012
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000DZTKP
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,570 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "American Dream" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Director Barbara Kopple's Oscar-winning rendering of a crippling strike at a Minnesota meat-packing plant may look dated, but the underlying theme of individuals crushed by big business remains all too timely. Using a briskly engrossing combination of first-person interviews, news broadcasts, and fly-on-the-wall encounters, Kopple creates an indelible document of a community's dissolution at the hands of larger forces. (The film is clearly on the side of the workers, but at the same time it refuses to ignore the petty infighting that eventually helped contribute to their ruin.) An alternately depressing, uplifting, and often profanely funny film that, at times, echoes Michael Moore's Roger and Me , but without that movie's distancing smarm. A movie's title has never seemed quite so bitterly apt. The director, who had previously won an Oscar for the equally arresting Harlan County USA, would later go on to document yet another traumatic event with Woody Allen's Wild Man Blues. --Andrew Wright

Product Description

Academy Award(r) Winner for Best Documentary, 1990, this acclaimed motion picture captures the stark reality of working men and women making impossibly tough choices about survival during a time of extreme economic crisis! When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened! Also honored with the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Feature Documentary, as well as the Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival-you'll be riveted by the compelling real-life drama in this powerful landmark film!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting film..., April 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: American Dream [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie is so dramatically powerful, it's hard to believe it's real life. It's the devastating story of what happens to a small town when it's only industry turns against it. The characters are larger-than-life and the movie sticks with you long after it's over. The viewer is taken on an emotional roller coaster ride from the hopeful beginnings of the strike to the crushing end. Having family in Austin, MN (where the film takes place), I can say that this movie hits the nail on the head all too well. See this film. It's a truly moving experience.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent film about the evolution and effect a strike, August 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: American Dream [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This documentary traces the development of labor unrest at a company that is planning to make substantial reductions in employees' pay. The story is told primarily from the employees' viewpoint, and includes elements of corporate campaigning, local versus international union politics, internal politics, the strike, and loss of employees' jobs. The human perspective is fully developed including emotional peaks and valleys, the strife within families, the decay of relationships between workers, and the the affect on the community.

The documentary is extremely well filmed and very moving.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful document... but be warned..., January 29, 2000

By 

Benjamin J. Zelkowicz (Valencia, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Dream [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Though it doesnt achieve the dramatic heights of "Harlan County, USA" this film is nonetheless a moving and disturbing document of workers and unions in battle with management, organized labor, and themselves. I have to believe that the person below who cheered the "crushing victory" of management over people who want "to earn more for doing less" was joking. This is a film about meat packers, a thoroughly disgusting job if there ever was one, who try to organize against the Hormel company, which is trying to slash their wages by $2 (It seems to me like management wants to pay the workers less for doing more). Unlike Harlan County, USA, though, the conflict of this film is mostly within the ranks of labor. The battle between international and local unions and between different strategies is what ultimately undermines the the worker's chances for success. A cheery film this is not, but an important one that anyone who cares about our American system of labor and corporate culture should see, along with Harlan County, Roger and Me, and Matewan. Be warned that there are many shots inside the met packing plant, complete with the evisceration and decapitation of many many pigs. It made me very glad I don't eat pork...