Customer Reviews

The Water Engine [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An interesting yet sad allegorical story set in the depression era by David Mamet. There is some truth simmering underneath a plausible plot. THE WATER ENGINE stars William H Macy as Charles Lang who invents an engine that runs entirely on water. When he tries to get get backers to help him patent the engine, he finds himself in a web of deceit,threats, betrayal and murder. There is no happy ending in this film because the minute he tries to reveal his invention, everything snowballs to less than positve results. Any help Lang tries to obtain, there seems to be a network of law enforcement to media (i.e. newspapers) that can't or won't help him. The point to the story is obvious as the power of the oil and auto industry are entities not to be reckoned with and that sometimes (or most of the time) the little man will lose to the big corporations.

A fine little movie based on a play by David Mamet. It maybe gets a little carried away with itself towards the end, and suffers from its "made for television" aesthetic, but it's still well-performed, gripping, and dark.

Outstanding movie about corrupt lawyers and big business. Any small manufacturer who has created a unique product and hopes to distribute it through stores like Staples, Office Depot, and CompUSA, (i.e., large U.S. specialty retailers) should see this movie before talking to anyone--particularly the buyers for the retailers. This movie takes viewers through the hair-raising twists and turns of deception and corruption that lead eventually to murder.

Rarely is the truth on film. David Mamet has captured the truth in a little film that rarely sees the light of day. This gem is not available (yet) on DVD or BluRay but it should be and it should also be required viewing for every thinking American adult. The subject is that big government and big corporate manage to stifle innovation (unless it is invented by them). A little guy has used electrolysis to create an engine that runs on water. Anyone who has taken high school chemistry knows that oxygen and hydrogen can power an engine: All you have to do is use electricity to separated the two. So when the inventor in this film tries to bring his invention to market, big oil, Detroit, and the Feds work together to prevent it. This serves as a marvelous parable about what has happened in the present century to cause our current economic woes. Well acted by William H. Macy, Charles Durning, Joe Mantegna, John Mahoney, and Mamet's usual cast of geniuses. SEE IT!

This is the type of film that should be shown to students of history and political science. David Mamet is one of America's better screen writers/directors of the smaller, independant film. Those of you who viewed Tucker might enjoy this similar story of a man ahead of his time. The big budget film Chain Reaction with Morgan Freeman was probably inspired from this gem of a movie.

William Macy does a good job as a man of dreams/visions who comes up with the ideal engine run on a cheap power source, H 2 O. His invention produces the domino effect. Big business becomes threatened and shady characters enter his life, uninvited. Oil companies don't want competition. This thread of the story line looks like it was taken from today's headlines. Now that gas is looming at $5 dollars a gallon, what would happen if this invention came out today?

A good movie provokes thought and discussion. The Water Engine deserves to be out on DVD and gain a bigger audience. I hope some company will put this movie out soon.

I'm a huge fan of this play by David Mamet (I even have the full sized Public Theater poster and an autographed copy of the play). What's so clever about it is how Mamet created a radio melodrama interspersing the action with the announcer's continuing saga of a chain letter, and what happened to people who "broke the chain." A foreshadowing of impending doom in the era of the great depression. The play received less than favorable reviews, but it was curious creative, compelling and an inventive undertaking in script form. I finally saw a fantastic production of the show by a talented cast at the Strawberry Theater Company in Seattle in 2009. It was even better than I though it would be, performed as a radio drama, no sets to speak of, but the drama mounting as situations spiral towards their climactic, nightmare ending.

I'm not sure how this movie/dve vesion with Patti LuPone is, but the original script is such a gem, that if you're a Mamet fan, it's not to be missed. An early work for sure, but this under rated theatrical venture, in my personal esteem, is one of his most inventive and compelling staged stories with The Winslow Boy and The Spanish Prisoner. Definitely a bit of Hitchcock in this. A cautionary tale about the evil Corporate America EMPIRE. Mamet, you rock!