Barfly | | Cast : | Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway | | Director : | Barbet Schroeder | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | December , 1987 | | DVD Released Date : | September 03, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 30, 2005 | | Summary | I Can't Believe it!...She's like a Vacuam Cleaner!!!! | Content
 | Man, i love this freakin' movie because i'm a supporter of all freaks who rebel against typical society rules and routine.
Mickey Rourke plays Henry Chinaski who lives to drink his days away and beat the living crap out of someone or get his grimy stinky butt kicked during the late night hours.
This screenplay was based on a story written by the legendary drunken genius Charles Bukowski and Mickey Rourke does justice to this disgusting yet utterly intriguing and enchanting character named Henry.
Henry is a writer who lives to escape what he dreads but without hurting anybody in the process.
He can't stand the night bartender of his favorite hangout because he represents everything that he hates from his cliched "Ladies Man" with the muscles appearance to his macho superficial way of existence.
So he looks forward to going to the alley to fist fight the Bartender (ably played by Frank Stallone) any chance he can with mixed results depending on whether he's had some fuel (Food) in his system.
I found it to be a hoot when Henry gets his face smashed in with a glob of gooey blood hanging out of his mouth and responding with "Is that all you got...my mother can hit harder than that".
Henry eventually walks into another dive and sees the love of his life sitting across the room and he heads over to Wanda played superbly by Faye Dunnaway.
Wanda is a battered pile of garbage but it's her disheveled beauty and possibly her stench that attracts Henry.
When Henry asks her what she did for a career she responds "I drink".
Wanda might have been kicked around but she has a dignity and a rough sense of femininity that is so likeable.
So they get together and have their fling and though they encounter each others demons they still stick it out.
Henry eventually gets discovered but he turns his back on that steel cage of proper society and continues with his familiar destructive ways.
Henry is not a person to hate but to pity yet you can really admire him because he lives by his own rules.
He survives without resorting to destroying others and his dedication to his poetry and writing as well as his love for Mahler and Mozart is admirable.
Henry might smell like a big pile of poop but he has a good heart and a winning witty way about him that you overlook the smell.
Destruction never looked so glorious with barf drenched drawers and all.
Here's a drink to my friends and to Henry Chinaski and don't forget to wash your underwear!!!!!
Oscar F.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 17, 2005 | | Summary | Pictures from life's other side | Content
| Henry Chinaski (Mickey Rourke) is a thinly disguised stand-in for screenwriter Charles Bukowski. He is a confirmed drunk with no inclination to be anything else; he is so contemptuous of society and most of the human race that he has simply decided to opt out of it altogether and wile away his years drinking and writing. His convictions are tested when a beautiful young magazine editor (Alice Krige) arrives to purchase one of his stories. She sees him as a brilliant, primitive talent and attempts to "save" him by offering money, luxury, and herself. Will he accept what most of us would consider a golden once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or will he return to his world of dives and his equally dissipated girlfriend, Wanda (Faye Dunaway)? I won't give it away, but if you know Bukowski, then you already know how this will turn out. Rourke and Dunaway do some of their finest work here, and the film drips with atmosphere, having been filmed on location in some of the actual seedy bars where Bukowski drank. An excellent look at a segment of society that we usually try not to think about very much./ |
| Rating | | | Date | May 29, 2005 | | Summary | How Come This Drunk Can ALWAYS Afford Cigarettes And Scotch? | Content
| Watching this movie calls for an immense "Suspension Of Disbelief " on te part of the viewer which I could not quite accomplish. It concerns a street drunk named Henry who spends most of his time drinking at the seedy Golden Horn Bar in Los Angeles. He gets to have sex with another drunk named Wanda (played by Faye Dunaway) and he doesn't even remember the sexual encounter the next day!!! Is this unbelievable or what? I am pretty sure if I had sex with a woman like Wanda I would remember the encounter. Then he gets to have sex with Tully Sorensen played by Alice Krige. For some obscure reason which is never explained Henry has no visible means of support or income yet he never runs out of cigarettes and always seems to have money for another Scotch and water. He also never has a hangover or loses his lunch and doesn't even get close to having a case of the D.T.'s in this movie.Henry spends a lot of time having contempt for people with money (who he secretly envies) and yet when he is offered a place to live in a Upper Class part of Los Angeles he declines the offer. I do feel very sad that this movie may have inspired a whole generation of young men to pick up the bottle in the sadly mistaken belief that they will get to have sex with beautiful women too. I give this movie 5 stars nbecause I do like Faye Dunaway . |
| Rating | | | Date | April 05, 2005 | | Summary | WHY?? | Content
| Mickey Rourke plays a Los Angeles bum who also writes poetry (it's about the real life Charles Bukowski, whose short story this is based on). He hangs out in a gin mill and gets beat up a lot. A rich publisher tries to get him onto the "right" track, even falls for him a little, but he won't have any of it. The movie is pretty downbeat and unenjoyable, though Rourke and his skidrow moll Faye Dunaway act it out fairly well. It's just by the end - who cares? |
| Rating | | | Date | December 01, 2004 | | Summary | 12 Steps is one step too Many. Pour me another... | Content
| Gonzo poet, writer, rebel, wild man and veteran Barfly without peer Charles Bukowski cranked out the script and guerilla filmmaker Barbet Schroeder wielded the camera for this pungent, wicked, hysterical tale of Hell itself: it is nothing other than the Damned with Drinks and the Dive Bar as steaming Hellpit. It's also huge tanker truckloads of fun. Drink up, the rounds are on me!
Mickey Rourke, then at the height of his powers, plays Bukowski stand-in and poet-genius-drunkard Henry Chinaski, who would love to write fantastic world-famous poetry and become wildly wealthy and idle his days away listening to Handel and chumming on caviar---but you know, a man's gotta have a First Love, and Henry does: Lady Booze, and boy is Henry faithful. What they hey! It's much easier to head down to the local watering hole, you know, and have just one shot. Just one shot.
Just one, c'mon Man, you know?
Consequently Henry is witty, sharp, caustic, totally disgusting, lives in a rat & cockroach infested flophouse, has meandering chatter sessions and fumbled sleepwalker sex with fellow drunkard Wanda Wilcox (Faye Dunaway who looks all bleary-eyed and tilts that bottle back like a champ! You go, girl!), and passes out in his own urine.
Publisher Tully Sorenson (Alice Krige, at the height of her powers and still eleven years away from her role as Borg Queen) discovers Henry: she's shocked by his nastiness and, simultaneously, by his genius. She wants to publish his poems. She wants to throw a life preserver down to Henry, with which he can escape the big old wine-dark sea of Old Grand-Dad in which he swims.
Guess what happens? Yeah, that's right, have another drink.
Anyway, underrated genius Barbet Schroeder and Charles Bukowski make a kind of diabolic duo in turning out this rummy-headed little epic of mind-boggling personal destruction. I don't know about Barbet (though the guy must have been fortifying himself with whiskey when he shot the amazing documentary "General Idi Amin Dada", which if you haven't seen, you should---hell, make it a double feature with "Barfly"), but Bukowski, who drank his way around the world---from Nazi Germany to seedy back alley L.A. dive bars---over the course of his 74 years on the planet---knows himself and knows his Enemy. His expertise shows.
The dialogue is funny and rings true. And cinematographer Robert Muller is just too cool for school here: you can practically feel the grime and smell the stale sweet rank stench of sour whiskey and sweat. And hey!---Buk himself puts in an appearance as a bar patron. Hey there, is that glass empty?
The acting is all first-rate: Mickey Rourke completely owns this movie. Completely. He actually pulls it off: he makes the life of a half-crazed almost totally out of his mind teeth-grinding wild-man look glamorous. I bought it. Faye Dunaway carries off the role of her career. Krige looks like a sturdy, stoic tugboat hitched to the stern of a swiftly sinking Titanic. Frank Stallone shows up as the angry barman! Jack Nance (of "Twin Peaks" fame and loyal David Lynch stable actor) puts in an appearance as the tricky detective. The script is crisp and crackles and rocks and rolls: frankly, I think this one gives David Mamet a run for his money; see if you don't agree.
In the end, we get to laugh it up and share a round or two or three---um, or four---with people who are disintegrating before our eyes, albeit in the funniest, most completely honest way possible. Henry is totally right: "Anyone can be a non-drunk: it takes a special talent to be a drunk---it takes endurance." That much is true: Henry and Wanda's "life" is chewing them up. Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it. Drink up! |
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