| |||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In This Movies & TV Item for $1.50
Trade in The Young Americans for a $1.50 Amazon.com Gift Card that can be redeemed for millions of items store wide. See more Movies & TV eligible for trade-in
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Editorial Reviews
YOUNG AMERICANS - DVD Movie
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moody, Moralistic, Violent and Loud,
This review is from: The Young Americans (DVD)
Harvey Keitel stars as a FBI agent in this dark and death-filled tale of gangs in London. The premise is a simple one, one that we've seen in many other mob movies. The older, established mobsters have a code of honor and try to do things the proper way. The rash, up and coming punks care nothing for honor and just want quick cash and drugs. In this case, it's an American - Carl Frazer (played by Viggo Mortensen) who is causing the trouble. The FBI has sent John Harris (Keitel) to help the London police force to shut him down.
Carl is a truly psychotic drug / arms dealer who loves to gather up lost but innocent young men, tell them that they are special, and then turn them into cold blooded killers. Carl gets his thrills from corrupting the virtuous. There are many comments throughout the movie - both by the cops and the old time mobsters - about how these young, sweet kids are having their lives destroyed by drugs and the lure of cash. In one scene, an old mob guy is attacked by two of these 'kids' who are trying to kill him. When he turns the tables on them, he refuses to shoot them - he just tells them to leave him alone. I admit that I have a bit of an issue with this constant referring to the adult men as "kids" - they appear to be in their early 20s, they are out drinking, working, having lives. It's always tragic when someone is led astray, but to call them helpless "boys" or "kids" is marginalizing their maturity, in my mind. Maybe if they'd made the boys in the movie in the 13-15 age range it would have played better with me. In any case, the movie is a little cardboardy. You have the crooked cops. Keitel is the hard-FBI-guy-who-is-still-tender. The mob guy is rough but tender too. Viggo is over the top as the psycho who smashes a prostitute's face in at a party because she was snorting coke instead of doing her job. His main lines and action only let him show 'moralless insanity' without many shades of anything else. Keitel got a lot of good moments and depth in his role, being tough with the bad guys, really caring about the innocent, and wrapped up in knots by his home life. Another great role was provided to Craig Kelly - he was great as the young man (oops I mean helpless boy) who first tries to avoid getting sucked into the situation, but finally has to make some hard decisions. On the violence end, there was a lot of it. There was also a lot of loud clubbing, meaning that either your ears are being blown out by the noise or you're missing the soft dialogue because it's muddled. I usually don't have any issues at all with sound balance on a DVD so I really did find it odd how the mix was done here. Maybe that was part of the intention - to make you feel like you didn't know what was going on and were immersed in this throbbing London scene. A great movie to watch once - either rental or on TV - before you decide if you want to actually own it.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Super British Film Noir,
By A Customer
This review is from: Young Americans [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I thought that I had seen all of Harvey Keitel's films but, due to the inexplicable failure of this film to attain a theatrical distributor in the U.S., I had never even heard of this one. Then I caught it on Bravo a few weeks ago and it knocked me out! It's a gritty, tough British crime film in the tradition of THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY. The cast is very good - of course, Keitel is excellent as a weary American liaison to the English police, but Craig Kelly (currently in the Brit TV series QUEER AS FOLK) is also impressive as Chris, a young man struggling to survive the mean streets of London. This film is truly a pleasant surprise.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Both Mortensen's and Keitel's fill their roles quite well, but that's all,,
By Pork Chop (Lisbon, Portugal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Young Americans (DVD)
THE YOUNG AMERICANS, released 1993, is a picture whose script
appears to have been written by a 14 year old, considering the social circle of the protagonists, the title of the movie itself, and the simplicity of the story. Unfortunately, those facts didn't turn out to be trumps for the picture. The strong point, is Harvey Keitel, who brings natural charisma and realism to the filming, playing a police detective on loan to Interpol (international enforcement) tracking down a weapons trafficker, played amusingly by the sometimes enigmatic star Viggo Mortensen. The lesson of this movie, is difficult to surmise, considering the confused, fatuous plot. Perhaps it is to bring patience to the segment of the population who is over 21, with regards to those younger than that age bracket, with a secondary goal bring to have the juvenile element reflect on the serious consequences of taking the message contained in music, pop culture, and TV at face value, and agreeing to be corrupted by criminal elements in society. The 3 major annoyances of this work, was first, the soundtrack. The audio level needlessly and relentlessly ranged from deafeningly loud (in the sequences filmed in the night club, and for the football match), to the inaudibel whispered lines uttered by the actors. Clearly, no effort was done to bring a consistent sound level throughout the movie. The next weakness, is the fact that the plot perhaps is so thin, empty, and the morality of the movie so hollow, that many sequences go on and on, for many minutes. Often, it appears the cameras are rolling to fill up movie frames, with the audience watching the time pass by, in expectation of actiont that often is never there. Lastly, the soundtrack wasn't ideal. The choice of the songs, the musical accompaniment showed effort and thought, but consistently missed the mark, and seemed inappropriate or distracting to the underlying action and story. Its strength, mostly stemming from Mortensen's and Keitel's dual efforts in carrying this picture to fruition. There's also a quasi-Matt Damon twin who fills his role quite well. With no suspense whatsoever, no thrill aspect maintained over 90 minutes, due to a lack of script, the end result is a movie worth 1.5 stars. Other positive aspects, in addition to the leading actors, are the filming locations in England, seen in the daytime, which are interesting in themselves. Clearly, not enough thought, effort was brought into boosting those weaker elements that otherwise, could have helped this movie succeed in the non-European markets.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Look for Similar Items by Category
Look for Similar Items by Subject
|
