Product Details

• Actors: Jeff Bridges, Edward Furlong, John Boylan, Greg Sevigny, Jayne Entwistle
• Directors: Martin Bell
• Writers: Martin Bell, Mary Ellen Mark, Peter Silverman
• Producers: Jeff Bridges, Cary Brokaw, Mary Ellen Mark, Nancy Rae Stone
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Lions Gate
• VHS Release Date: April 14, 1998
• Run Time: 113 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302918332
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,102 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Jeff Bridges may be the American film actor with the most unseen great performances to his credit. Near the top of the list of Bridges's most overlooked films is this one, the first fiction film by documentary maker Martin Bell (Streetwise). Bridges plays Jack, an ex-con fresh out of prison and back in Seattle, where he is joined by Nick (Edward Furlong), a teenage son he barely knows. Nick wants nothing more than to spend time with Jack, to feel like a family. But Jack can barely cope with the concept of holding a job and staying out of trouble; he can hardly take care of himself, let alone be responsible for a teenager. Bell shows the toll on both as they slowly develop a bond and, after several false starts, learn to trust and care for each other. Bridges is magnificent as this loner who must learn to trust feelings he'd given up on years before. It's an involving and tragic tale. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker

Jack Kelson (Jeff Bridges), the hero of Martin Bell's film, is a fortyish ex-con who lives in a miserable furnished room in Seattle with his fourteen-year-old son, Nick (Edward Furlong). This is the sort of character that tends to bring out the worst in actors: a loser with big dreams. But Bridges wins the audience's belief. He doesn't try to act the movie's trite ideas about fatherhood and self-fulfillment and the American Dream: his physical eloquence makes everything Kelson does look like the result of a lifetime of constant trouble and lousy choices, and his dry, unassuming, lived-in acting style has a mysterious cumulative power. The documentary flatness of Bell's direction is ideal for recording a performance like this one. But when Bridges isn't onscreen the script (by Peter Silverman, from a story by Silverman, Bell, and Mary Ellen Mark) is left to its own devices, and the movie seems to flounder. The picture turns out to be about nothing more interesting than luck, and that's too bad, because Bridges' beautiful, radiantly precise acting has stirred in us the hope that it might actually be about grace. Also with Lucinda Jenny and Don Harvey. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A father & son "buddy" movie -- on the sad streets, March 25, 2000

By 

sml17 "music & film afficionado" (Pleasantville, USA) - See all my reviews

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

Veteran underrated actor Jeff Bridges is complete- ly believeable as a freshly released convict back on the streets of Seattle. His estranged son, young teen actor Edward Furlong (Terminator II), attaches himself, searching for a crumb of family he never had. Streetwise and antisocial, the dad dreams of a new life in Alaska, taking his son with him through the dream. Yet the harsh despair of the streets, poverty, and society's underbelly tug against the two, struggling to have a life and learn who each other is. A perfect study on the barriers which society and economics put before an ex-offender in American society. Recommended for its raw authenticity and acting, not for warm fuzzies.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Martin Bell's American Heart, January 19, 2004

By 

Charles Tatum - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Heart (DVD)

This film has an excellent cast rising above some lackluster material you have seen before in other "angry ex-con" driven stories.

Jack (Jeff Bridges) is a recently released convict who tries to dump his fifteen year old son Nick (Edward Furlong) in the very first scene. Jack heads to Seattle, with Nick following, in order to set up a new life without the bothers of fatherhood. Jack meets with his old partner in crime Rainey (Don Harvey), who pays Jack a little money. Jack gets a job washing windows on high rise buildings, and settles into a small apartment.

And then there is Nick. He has left Jack's sister's farm to live with him. He skips out on registering for school, and hangs around some homeless street kids downtown. Jack is boozing his way through Seattle, meeting up with Charlotte, who used to write him by way of a personals magazine called "American Heart." Nick gets a job delivering newspapers, and Nick and Jack share their little apartment, upstairs from a topless dancer and her troubled teen daughter Molly (Tracey Kapisky).

The film then meanders through scenes of Jack and Nick arguing, then grudgingly making up, trying to develop some sort of normal relationship. Rainey cannot get Jack to come back to crime, but he does eventually get Nick to serve as a lookout for a job. Jack is saving for an impossible dream of moving to Alaska, and Nick wants to help. Nick and Molly grow closer, and Nick shoplifts a pair of shoes for her. Jack discovers the merchandise, along with some weed. Rainey robs Jack, who is also evicted and fired from his job.

Eventually, the cast begins spiraling downward, as Nick gets involved in a burglary for Rainey that goes horribly wrong, and Molly begins taking after her mother. Jack and Nick decide to leave Seattle, but Jack needs to take care of one more thing first...

Martin Bell was responsible for "Streetwise," the gritty documentary about homeless street kids that is among the greatest documentaries ever produced. He used this experience with this fictional film, but I found this screenplay often resorted to Hollywood convention. The ex-con trying to make it on the outside has been done, but maybe not this well acted before.

I wish Jeff Bridges would just win an Oscar. His performance here is wonderful. He is flawed, and his behavior is innate. He does not want a relationship with Nick, and makes that all too obvious without resorting to stereotypical behavior. Bridges even has a light moment, when Jack's parole officer Normandy (Melvyn Hayward) is banging on the apartment door, and a hungover Jack finds underage Molly fast asleep at the foot of his bed.

Furlong, who I have never liked in anything, gives his best performance here, too. I noticed his scenes where he plays opposite adults are more effective than when he is dealing with his teenage contemporaries. He is sympathetic without being saintly or cutesy. Jack and Nick's argument in the apartment, where Nick smashes a treasured ukulele, is strong stuff. Lucinda Jenney as Charlotte is also good, although Bell unwisely drops her character from the last part of the film after we have become so involved with her. While Don Harvey as Rainey is okay, there is a mentor relationship with Jack that is never fully explored. He looks Furlong's age, someone with a harder edge may have made more of an impact.

"American Heart" is a decent film that should be sought out for the acting. Jeff Bridges deserves all the praise he has ever received, and this film should have given him more than he got.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably Jeff Bridges, Edward Furlong's best film, March 14, 2005

By 

Drake-by-the-Lake "movie critic" (State of Euphoria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Heart (DVD)

I am suprised how many have not seen American Heart, but for some reason this movie was fated to be a sleeper gem waiting to be discovered by the fortunate few. Good performances all around, a sensible script, and most importantly not too much syrup, unlike a lot of other family dramas that lay it on a bit too thick. If you like realism and want a film that explores the plot described above, then this is an excellent choice.

(...)

Furlong's characters exhibit reserve, introversion, and recklessness. Part of his character, not to say charm, is a mysterious dark side which may have a basis in reality, if media reports are to be believed.