Customer Reviews

Edmond

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Perhaps the real title of David Mamet's incendiary Edmond should perhaps be, careful what you wish for, or even don't vilify certain minority groups because your actions may come back to haunt you. This edgy and provocative film, featuring a truly spectacular performance by William H. Macy, features the cerebral Mamet at his dramatic best.

Here we have the angst-ridden, misogynistic, racist and homophobic male, so pent-up with hidden fury that he's becomes a walking nightmare. He's a bomb waiting to burst as all the years of "being on top" gradually deflate as he trolls through a nighttime labyrinth of crime-ridden streets, alleyways, and strip clubs in New York, just waiting to explode. (Interestingly the movie was actually filmed in Downtown Los Angeles).

Edmond Burke (Macy) is deeply frustrated with is life and work. Tired of being a white-collar robot, he abruptly tells his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon) that he is going to walk out on their marriage because she no longer interests him sexually or spiritually. He's just been to a tarot card reading and the results are not good - murder, blood, mayhem and prison dominate with the dumbfounded psychic telling him, "You are not where you belong."

In a local bar he meets a fellow white-collar worker (Joe Mantegna) directs Edmond to a gentleman's club where he convinces him that what he probably needs is some sex. And in this scene we get the first glimpse of a man who is living on the edge and is easily swayed.

He visits a strip club, a peep show and a massage parlor, where he visits a variety of gorgeous girls including Denise Richards and Mena Suvari, but he's too tight-fisted to part with any money and leaves in a huff or is physically ousted. Back on the street he's preyed on by African-Americans and then arms himself and lashes out, but violence brings him no peace.

He ends up at the apartment of a kindly waitress (Julia Stiles) where wielding a knife, he unleashes a rant, a foul-mouthed tirade against certain minority groups. She freaks out and he resorts to an action where the damage to his life is irreparably done. Edmond's final odyssey finally takes him from the city to a penitentiary where his prejudices come back to haunt him and where he is forced to face all that drove him into his crazy delusions.

Originally written for the stage in 1982, some of the issues may seem a bit dated by today's standards. The idea of pinstriped respectability meeting the - mostly black - urban nihilistic jungle might come across as a bit perfunctory, and even a bit clichéd. Still, the story with its incendiary language and its merciless portrait of a 47-year-old fractured man who embraces his own worst nightmares of racial and sexual suppression is still totally compelling.

Indeed Edmond is a must-see for fans of Bill Macy, who is truly a master at playing this walking time bomb in mild-mannered camouflage. With his ears sticking out from his washed out, blood drained face, he is indeed truly scary. Edmond might be depressing and provocative and even disgusting, but it's also gritty and honest and worth watching for experiencing one of America's best known serious playwrights working in all his unadulterated and uncensored grandeur. Mike Leonard October 06.

Per Amazon..."A man becomes involved in a twisted game of sex, lies and murder with 3 young women."

Not quite, as there's really no game here. This is basically "Falling Down" on acid... and that's a good thing.

Macy turns in a powerhouse, psychotic performance and Mamet's material is full of unexpected scenes that successfully aim to shock.

Of course the biggest shock of all was that B-horror master, Stuart Gordon, directed it.

Try not to watch the trailer to this movie before you see it and you will be in for a disturbing, original viewing experience.

EDMOND is a dark, dank, mercilessly downer of a film - that just happens to be one of the best pieces of work the very talented William H. Macy has ever done. In a bravura performance he embodies the strange creature created by David Mamet, triumphs in the extended monologues that include hate, racism, homophobia, hopelessness, and fear and serves them up in a near stoic way that allows the viewer to accompany the dissociating man into the depths of hell - but with an absolutely solid ending. It may not be an easy movie to watch, but it is clearly one actor's tour de force that deserves attention.

Edmond (Macy) is a bored, frustrated. angry robot of a worker who happens on a fortune teller who reads his Tarot cards and tells him he is in the wrong place. Edmond, obviously disturbed, goes home, leaves his wife who no longer stimulates him spiritually or sensuously, and begins his Rake's Progress journey through the bowels of the filthy city. He has a bar conversation with an anonymous guy (Joe Montegna) who advises him to go get laid, gives him an address, and disappears. What follows is a series of bad encounters with hookers, peep show dancers, sidewalk con artists, and pimps: Edmond spits out vitriolic racist epithets, is beaten and robbed, pawns his ring, buys a vicious knife, and begins his retribution - a path that includes murder and prison. As he ultimately finds his prison cell the only place of rest he can tolerate, in comes a cellmate (African American of course) and after an abusive start, Edmond shaves his head, gets tattooed and the story closes in a rather tender fashion.

The cast is superb: the vignettes of the characters Edmond encounters include Mena Suvari, Julia Stiles, Bokeem Woodbine, Rebecca Pidgeon, along with other less well known but equally fine actors. Stuart Gordon directs Mamet's play-to-film story with the right amount of bluntness and dark, smarmy street situations. But it is Macy who is uncanny in his ability to carry us along the warped and disintegrating mind of the character who could be any of a number standing next to us in an elevator....A tough film but well worth viewing. Grady Harp, October 06

I went into watching this movie with great expectations.....and was slapped by the back hand called Edmund. This movie only did not live up what the trailer protrayed it to be but was also slow moving and confusing at the end! If you are looking to kill an hour and a half of your life go get a root canal.....don't waste it watching this movie!

Mamet's EDMOND offeres an interesting irony: Edmond, played wonderfully by William H. Macy, is dis-satisfied with his life, bored. A card-reader tells Edmond he's in the wrong place, so he leaves his wife and begins a search for fulfillment. But Edmond's on the wrong track: he wanders from frustration to frustration feeling as if he's the only one who is sane. Edmond's rambling monologues show a mind rapidly dissembling, until he commits the ultimate act and must pay the consequences. And then comes the irony... Well, at least Edmond is no longer bored.

This is an interesting concept, but the dialogue is clipped and wooden, except that is for the rants of Edmond. The movie's a bit slow moving, but interesting all the same.

It's not hard to say that William Macy's an actor's actor--which means that he can take on virtually any role and do absolute wonders with it. In "Edmond" he's the title character who, at the beginning, walks out on his beautiful, sexy wife (Rebecca Pidgeon), which immediately sets the viewer's mind on edge. It's not only that she's so attractive; it's also the way he phrases his disillusion with her that makes you cringe.

From there things go progressively downhill. We start with Edmond's frustration in his marriage and subsequently understand his lust--which apparently was not being satisfied by his beautiful wife--and, ultimately, his rage. It's rage, in fact, that fuels Edmond throughout the course of the film, through his encounters with three different hookers, a woman on a subway, a waitress, and a pimp on the street. Early on, his rage is also fueled by a man in a bar Edmond goes to; the man is played by Joe Mantegna, who spouts racism and sexism as fluidly and easily as anyone might talk about the weather. And Edmond immediately agrees with everything the man says--not because, as we understand, he really is necessarily racist or sexist, but because he is more than anything else a truly angry person.

Rage makes Edmond lie and kill, and drives him to attempts at lustful encounters with the hookers, all of which end in frustration and non-fulfillment. In this short (under 80 minutes) film, Macy gives a knockout performance as Edmond. This is a one-man show definitely worth seeing.

The ending is a bitterly ironic conclusion to a highly troubled journey that ultimately leaves the viewer either sad or pondering...or perhaps both.

Highly recommended.

I rented this film on a whim because it sounded interesting and had a decent cast for an indie. It's not a bad movie but I must be clear that it is marketed all wrong.

First of all it is called a "sexy-thriller". This right away is wrong. The movie plods along with very specific slow pacing, music, and scenes. It was designed to be slightly disjointed and a little awkward but even in scenes of violence there is little pulse. As for sexy? Well Richards and Suvari barely have 2 lines each even though they are prominant on the box cover and Bai Ling does a strip tease which kills another 2 minutes of screen time. Most of the sexiness is Macy just walking around a red light district looking at posters and ads. Also by about the midway point, maybe even earlier, the film turns on it's head a bit and obviously sexiness or even blatant sex has little to do with it. Also why in the world is a gun on the front cover??? Unless I missed something that gun or any gun really was never part of any scene in the entire movie.

Over all the story is interesting if not a little flimsy and lacking some depth beyond the middle aged man losing his grip angel. Some of the dialogue has some unique plot but mostly the film is Macy walking around telling people they are charging him too much money. After a while it is obvious he has lost his mind a bit but the director really slams it home so by films end you will be tired of his psychotic ramblings. There was some humor involved and I did enjoy that.

Overall I think I would have enjoyed this film more had the marketing been accurate. It is a slow drama not a sexy thriller.

Mamet, who brought us "House of Cards", has now filmed an hour-and-a-half commercial for the death penalty, in my opinion -- wrapped in the gauze of semi-big-name stars -- as they wander through this self-indulgent "art film".

The central character played by Macy is an unsympathetic socio-psychopath with no motivation whatosoever for going off the rails. I HATED the guy. His victims, particularly the Stiles charachter, bring his attention on themselves by their own stupid actions.

I couldn't have cared less about any of these people, they were all thoroughly unlikeable.

Is the sacred name "Mamet" supposed to forgive all sins?

I read an earlier review referring to the "nihilism" of this piece of dreck. That review dishonored the philosophical concept of nihilism.

I have to wonder just exactly how deranged Mamet is to write an episodic, pointless, repulsive, and -- worst of all -- boring film such as this.

This thing is disappearing into oblivion faster than the Roadrunner can take a curve. No wonder it never hit the theaters.

There is a problem with having a track record. People expect you to be able to recreate magic anytime you step up to the plate (how's that for mixing metaphors?). I saw this DVD on the shelf at Blockbuster, and when I saw it was from the person that wrote one of my favorite movies (Glengarry GlenRoss), and starred one of my favorite actors William Macy, I couldn't get to the checkout counter quick enough.

Where Glengarry GlenRoss was one of the best written, best acted films with the most diverse and accomplished ensemble cast ever to be contained in a single title, Edmund was mostly a one man show where the people that that character encountered where used almost as props for his dialog and actions. Macy is great (as always), but I never felt the empathy for him that I did for Jack Lemmon's down on his luck Shelly "the machine" Levene in Glen'. I never felt hatred for any of the others on the screen like I did for Kevin Spacey's office boss character. I really couldn't care less for any of the people in the movie.

There was one scene early in the film that had a familiar feel with Glen', where Macy was drinking and chatting with a stranger in a bar after having just walked out on his wife. This was classic Mamet back-and-forth, and was right up there with Pachino's Ricky Roma working his mark to get him to sign on the line in Glen'. I was feeling good about the film at that point, but that encounter passed and it lost the Mamet vibe for me for the rest of the movie.

This was not a bad film, but I expected more based on the pedigree. Like I said, having a track record can be a good thing, or it can remind the viewer how far you might be from your peak. When I wish to introduce the uninitiated to Mamet (and terrific acting), I'll pull out my copy of Glen' and show how well the written word can be rendered on-film.

After my initial viewing of Stuart Gordon's film I knew, absolutely knew, that people were going to despise it, hate it with a venomous wrath, and I, as per usual, was spot on.

"What filmmakers have to understand is that movie goers want to be entertained, not preached to!" This is so pathetic that, as someone who appreciates film as art, it makes me want to drown a bunch of puppies.

Andrei Tarkovsky, I'm paraphrasing, said that films should not be made solely for entertainment, that films, for the longest time, have "sinned" and should pay for just that - being mindless shlock that gives the viewer absolutely nothing at all, this is a belief I thoroughly agree with.

The film is gritty, and will offend the same crowd who absolutely adores Crash, because, apparently, everyone is supposed to be nice to everyone, and Walt Disney will run the world.

Everyone involved gives fantastic performances, and Gordon, as usual, does a great job directing. This is no Re-Animator, this is a film with a brain, with thoughts, ideas and a philosophy.

The last 15 minutes or so do take quite a sharp turn; Macy bald with a Sam Elliot satche, and a "lover" in prison who he waxes philosophic with, but this aspect didn't bother me at all; if anything it showed, very well, how random life can be, because, as we all know, life is one giant absurdity and nothing more.