Product Details

• Actors: Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Giancarlo Esposito, José Zúñiga, Stephen Gevedon
• Directors: Paul Auster, Wayne Wang
• Writers: Paul Auster
• Producers: Bob Weinstein, Diana Phillips, Greg Johnson, Harvey Weinstein, Hisami Kuroiwa
• Format: PAL
• Language: English
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Run Time: 112 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0001MIQLW
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,801 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Smoke" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

It's refreshing to see a film in which the writer receives equal credit with the director, showing that the dialogue actually means something. So it is with Smoke, a film about a New York quilt of contemporary characters who cross paths in a corner smoke shop, told in straightforward way by a talented acting group. Author Paul Auster and director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) worked on the story for years before it reached the screen. Their characters include Paul (William Hurt, in a good role again), a grief-stricken novelist; Auggie (Harvey Keitel), the shop's owner with a secret passion; Ruby (Stockard Channing), Auggie's long-ago girlfriend; and Rashid (Harold Perrineau Jr.), a teenager who is befriended by Paul and seeks his estranged father (Forest Whitaker). All the characters are great storytellers, whether it be out of loneliness, necessity, or just nature. Like Auster's The Music of Chance, the movie has accomplished an amazing feat: it makes us feel as if we are reading a serious novel, not watching a movie. --Doug Thomas

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh, New and Different, September 23, 2004

By 

M. Fields (Brooklyn, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Smoke (DVD)

Smoke is a great off beat film that took me by surprise. I just happened to catch it on cable one day. For those of you that live in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, you'll love seeing that part of town on film including the "J" train as it slowly creeps up the track towards the Williamsburgh Bridge and BedStuy off in the hazy distance and the old Williamsburgh Bank in the foreground. It's a long lazy shot and I find myself sometimes watching that scene over and over again. It's a beautiful shot of that part of Brooklyn. Close enough to hear the train but far enough to keep the other city noises in the background. Utterly beautiful!

This film is full of quirky characters. Auggie (Harvey Keitel) is probably the most off beat and quirky of them all. Stockard Channing gives a stunning performance as Auggie's ex girlfriend and Ashley Judd is brilliant, even though she only has one scene, as their drug addicted, poor and bitter daughter. The film also stars William Hurt (Altered States), Harold Perrineau Jr, (Romeo&Juliet) and Forest Whitaker (Panic Room).

The most unexpected moment in Smoke is Auggie's Christmas story. I don't want to give too much away but it's sad, touching and funny all at the same time. Don't look for special effects, explosions, car chases or gun fights here. There are none. Just good storytelling.

Also interesting are the bonus attractions on the dvd. Seeing the director (Wayne Wang) direct another director (Forest Whitaker) and watching Whitaker accept and discuss Wang's directions were especially captivating.

All in all, a lovely film to curl up with. Enjoy!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exhilarating in its wisdom, February 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smoke [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I am your average movie buff whose taste in movies runs from the traditional movie fare such as "Ben-Hur", "E.T.", and "Star Wars". However, more and more recently I find myself attracted to the independent cinema. "Smoke" was a film that follows close on the heels of such indie blockbusters as "Short Cuts" and "Pulp Fiction" and, though not to take anything away from the former two films (which in my opinion are both masterpieces), "Smoke" lives up to the hype. Harvey Keitel was embarrasingly shut out of the Academy Awards in '95 (as was the entire film and two other gems from that year, "Heat" and "Casino", whose places in the Oscar slot were replaced by such bizarre choices as the inspirational but still rather childish "Babe" and the Italian Communist propaganda "Il Postino")for what I think is one of the most earthy and brazenly un-movie star-like performances of all time. His Auggie Wren is an enigma; at first sight you see a rugged man worn out by the day-to-day routine. Those who know him better, like widower novelist Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), find a keen philosophical spark behind the skewed demeanor of a cigar shop proprietor. The film has been read by many as too literate for its own good; why employ such insights into celluloid? The answer is not only in Paul Auster's brilliant writing (this film should have won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar), but in the minimalist conceits of Adam Holender's camerawork and the mood invoked by director Wayne Wang's leisurely pacing of scenes. The scene where Keitel and Hurt are sitting inside the cigar shop looking at Keitel's photo album is one of the most moving and provocative scenes I have ever seen on film, ditto the entire last fifteen minute segment, essaying "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story", an idiosyncratic piece that originally appeared in the New York Times in Christmas 1990. The film's closing dialogue is one of the most poignant recent lines ever to end a movie: Wren: If you can't share your secrets with your friends then what kind of friend are you? Benjamin: Exactly...then life just wouldn't be worth living. The brilliance of the entire film is precisely how minimal its plotline is. Those who disagree that the film's meandering style didn't suit them miss the point. The pacing may be lazy, but the film surely is not. It's odd, and never before has the lack of harmony as displayed by Tom Waits' boozy barroom version of "Innocent When You Dream" seemed so poetic when coincided with the images of this film. The film has a message involving race, and I realized what a true filmmaker Wang is in not losing the subtlety of this message. Cross-cultural differences cannot be solved by obsessively preaching and ranting at your audience. They can be solved through generous displays of human emotion and a good evocation of sentiment. Wang does precisely this when, as the end credits unfold, he shows Keitel's hands clenched in between the lonely fingers of an elderly black lady. In perfect contrast, Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" sermonizes when Mookie the pizza delivery boy speaks of Louis Farrakhan and the entire celluloid of the film crawls with a false reverence shown toward the man whose anti-Semitism and reverse racism ring hollow within the tolerance context that film was trying to shoot for. "Smoke" may not be for everybody, and I realize that for those unfamiliar with novelistic style and flourish the film's many shots-which-call-attention-to-themselves (such as the camera moving into Keitel's lips as he tells the Christmas story) may seem needlessly stylistic, but the idea is not to get irritated by such a thing, but to weigh how closely the story's impact becomes so much more personal as the close-up gets tighter. 1995 was a really good year for movies: right off the top of my head I can name "Braveheart", "Apollo 13", "Seven", "Get Shorty", "Casino", "Toy Story", "Heat", "Sense and Sensibility", "Twelve Monkeys", and "Richard III". "Smoke" was the cream of the crop.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This movie is pure art, September 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smoke [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie is pure art. And Wang and Auster are fine craftsman. Auster with a wonderfully dense and intricate image of the 4 main characters and the half-dozen others. And Wang in his tableau presentation of each story. The scene with Keitel and Hurt looking through Auggie's photo album reminded me of Monet's paintings at Giverney. Each painting of the same spot, but with different light, or fog or seasonal vegetation. The same of the photos. When Auggie has Paul slow down and look at each photo, true art. And of course the stark realism of the final scene with Keitel telling the Christmas story. We again see Wang the artist. First with a simple scene in a deli and the magnificent acting of Keitel and Hurt. And then the artist clears his pallette and tells it again in pictures and music with Tom Waits. Unbelieveable! The best movie of that year.