Product Details

• Actors: Jon Voight, Ann-Margret, Burt Young, Angelina Jolie, Samantha Harper
• Format: Color, Director's Cut, DVD, Widescreen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: June 30, 2009
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001TK80CK
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #48,536 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Lookin' to Get Out (Extended Version)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The Oscar-winning film-editor-turned-director Hal Ashby had an undeniable hot streak in the 1970s: from Harold and Maude to The Last Detail, from Shampoo to Coming Home, Ashby's ragged style and politically-aware attitude were all over movie theaters. Thanks to some combination of bad luck and personal demons, Ashby hit the wall as the '80s began--which is when he embarked on Lookin' to Get Out, a barely-released Vegas comedy. Based on a script co-written by Ashby's Coming Home star, Jon Voight, the film follows two hustling buddies (Voight and Burt Young) as they scramble to raise funds to pay off a gambling debt. They get comped a fancy suite when Young gets mistaken for an old pal of the hotel owner, but will their good luck hold when they stake a gifted blackjack player (Bert Remsen in rare form) to a run in the casino? Adding spice is Ann-Margret, as a former Voight flame who just happens to be the current girlfriend of the hotel magnate. (Footnote to film history: her daughter is played by a very young Angelina Jolie, Voight's real-life daughter, in her film debut.) The set-up is unremarkable, but the film is distinguished by a couple of factors. One is that in the early sequences, Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler capture a splendidly gritty urban feel that links this movie to the American cinema of the 1970s. The other is the sheer unlikability of Voight's character and performance. It's one thing to offer a self-destructive exploiter who serves as a kind of anti-hero, and quite another to give him a vague, incoherent reading that dribbles away into Cassavetes-like floundering right before your eyes. Bizarre. The film's DVD release is a significantly altered version from the movie that flopped in 1982; Ashby had re-cut the picture and donated it to UCLA before he died in 1988, and that previously-unseen (even by Voight) cut is immortalized here. It's an interesting, oddball movie, the kind of thing that could only have been brought off, and indulged, by Hal Ashby. --Robert Horton

Product Description

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/26/2009

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After Nick Dawson's Biography, January 3, 2010

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I read Nick Dawson's biography of Hal Ashby and admired the young Scottish biographer's attempt to make sense out of the mad rush of US life in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. What a challenge, and in the book he announces that he has uncovered, with the help of Ashby's daughter, Ashby's own cut of LOOKIN TO GET OUT in the UCLA film archives. He made the movie sound so good I pre-ordered the thing on Amazon and counted the days till it appeared. So this is all your fault, Mr. Dawson! In this case, I'm terribly grateful, because I too had heard the stories of how awful GET OUT was and if you hadn't been so persuasive I wouldn't have given the picture a first chance, much less a second.

We watched it on New Years Day, and it was a good way to begin what I hope will be a much better year than last year. Ashby's direction is topnotch and from the beginning he establishes a mood and atmosphere that carries the movie in a rather different direction than the Vegas Vacation sort of caper movie I had written it off as. The movie is like something Robert Altman might have made in his heyday, and Jon Voight and Burt Young excel as hardcore loser gamblers who can't keep a twenty dollar bill in their wallets. In their Morningside Heights apartment life is so squalid that we were reminded forcible of Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy. In fact the whole movie is like Midnight Cowboy + The Sting, is you can picture that. Then they have to go to Las Vegas; this part of the setup seemed awfully forced but once they got to the MGM Grand, the movie starts to improve in innumerable ways.

For one thing Ann-Margret's there, and she used to be involved with Voight way back when (six years ago) and we hear she has a five year old daughter, and I'm a sucker for any movie that makes me do the math of pregnancy. Patricia (Ann-Margret) is being kept by the manager of the hotel, slick Bernie Gold, and again based on the average caper movie you wouldn't think you would like this character but the actor, and the writing, makes him strangely sympathetic. I would have liked a whole movie based on this guy, he's a real cool cat.

Speaking of cool cats we get tiny glimpses not only of Angelina Jolie, but of Siegfried and Roy! Very eerie! Anyhow if you like the old, slapdash, ragged narratives that Ashby (and a packl of other talented US directors) used to present us in the golden age of the New American Cinema, get ready for another fantastic addition to that list of great pictures. Again my thanks to Nick Dawson for the tip.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forgotten Masterpiece, June 24, 2009

By	Emer Foley "Emer Foley" (California) - See all my reviews

Smash and Grab
This movie influenced Tarantino along with "Eight Million Ways to Die". The last couple of movies by Hal Ashby were swept under the carpet but both broke new ground in depicting the quirky underworld characters that would, just a little bit later, become so hip in Hollywood. Ashby, like Peckinpah, was a wild maverick but I can't wait to see his director's cut and if you've never seen this you're in for a real treat.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Holy Cow!!!! You're All So Very Very Lucky!!! You All Hit The Jackpot!!!, August 8, 2009

By	Bernie Gold (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

Wow. I cannot believe this came out on DVD. For years it has been in my Top 5 movies. I have bought, collected, and coveted many copies of the CBS/Fox VHS version so I would never be without it. I assumed, because of the weak (and completely wrong) reviews and box office performance of the film that it would never be released on DVD. I'm so glad it has been, and I cannot wait to see Hal Ashby's cut.

With all due respect to the Editor at Amazon, Jon Voight's character is anything but "unlikeable, vague, and incoherent". Alex Kovac is intense. He lives hard, he loves hard, he plays hard, he is incapable of modulation. He loves his friend, Jerry Feldman more than himself. There's a great tiny little action that takes place in the apartment in NYC before they go to Vegas. I've never forgotten it, and I'm sure it was not written into the script. Alex has been up all night playing poker and has explained to Jerry how he went through tens of thousands of dollars between the track and the race track. The scene is a riot for anyone who has ever gambled on a fairly big level. It is beautifully done, but what makes it absolutely perfect for me, is when his friend has just gone through the ups and downs and finally the big downer from hearing the result of the loss and debt of a lot of money they need to come up with, Voight's character tells Jerry that he's exhausted, that he's been up all night, and "Let's go get some breakfast." And then he gives the little unwritten touch of cinematic magic... he gently pats his friend on the back. The gesture is huge. It says, "I know I've done us a great disservice by losing all this money. I'm sorry. I love you. I'll not let you down. Please don't be disappointed in me because I'll be devastated." I'm sure I'm the only one who has paid such close attention to the gesture, but to me as a hopeful screenwriter, it's beautiful.

This film was originally marketed terribly. The movie poster is so misleading it's tragic. This isn't a film about gambling. It's a movie about friendship, and the depths real friends will go to in order to stay friends. There are some great pieces of dialog in this movie. Burt Young confides to Ann Margaret about Voight's character, "If you're in a jam, he's a great guy to have around. The problem is he's probably the reason you're in a jam in the first place." Brilliant. And the scene in the casino, where Jerry Feldman tells Richard Bradford, who should have been nominated for a supporting role as "Bernie Gold", the very intimidating owner of the casino, "I understand you, Mr. Gold. He doesn't, but he's my friend and you take the good with the bad." Hearing those words brings Voight out of his greed induced stupor, and he looks at the big boss and quietly asks him, "Did you hear that?" And then they leave. So amazingly great. Also great is Voight's reaction at the end as Ann Margaret looks at him as he and Jerry are leaving. Voight can't even say anything he's so moved. He simply holds up his hand. His emotions are so strong he chooses to just not say anything. That is perfect in keeping with his character. I doubt that was written into the script either.

I want to mention Richard Bradford (Bernie Gold) and Bert Remsen (Smitty Carpenter). As you can all see, I've been using the Bernie Gold character as my User ID for as long as I've been using a computer. How The Academy missed these two performances is beyond me. Bradford plays Gold so complex in this film. He's strong, intimidating, sure of himself, and but extremely weak where Ann Margaret is concerned. I absolutely love the Bernie Gold character. And Remsen as the has-been blackjack player, his performance I believe was the best of his long illustrious career.

Here's my long and short review... This is the best movie about friendship I have ever seen, and I am a real movie buff with an insatiable appetite for movies. I am so thrilled that all of you are going to be able to see this now, and it will clearly flow better with the additional footage, as the great director wanted people to see it. Ignore all previous reviews. You've all hit the jackpot.