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starring: Bill Sage, Robert John Burke, Karen Sillas, Elina Löwensohn, Martin Donovandirected by: Hal Hartley
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302711684
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
ISBN: 6302711681
Label: Columbia/Tri-Star
Manufacturer: Columbia/Tri-Star
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Columbia/Tri-Star
Release Date: April 06, 1994
Running Time: 105 minutes
Sales Rank: 76858
Studio: Columbia/Tri-Star
Theatrical Release Date: 1992
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Simple Men opens with small-time hood Bill (Robert Burke from RoboCop 3) asking a bound and blindfolded security guard if he can have the guard's Virgin Mary medallion. 'Be good to her and she'll be good to you,' says the guard. Immediately after, Bill is double-crossed by his girlfriend and his partner. From there, the plot goes off in a completely different direction: Bill and his younger brother Dennis (William Sage, High Art), a philosophy student, go off in search of their father, a former star shortstop who may have committed a bombing many years ago. Their only clue is a phone number on Long Island; they end up at a cafe run by Kate (Karen Sillas, Female Perversions), which is also the hangout for Elina Löwensohn (Nadja) and Martin Donovan (Hollow Reed, The Opposite of Sex). But plot is never the point in Hal Hartley movies (Trust, Amateur, Henry Fool); it's just a clothesline on which to hang odd, quirky scenes--moments like Donovan and Sage trying to imitate Löwensohn's dance movements to a Sonic Youth song, or a half-drunken conversation about pop music and self-exploitation. Hartley's deliberately stilted dialogue and stylized performances actually play better on video; the movie feels more intimate, making the humor more relaxed and fluid. Hartley is the kind of idiosyncratic filmmaker who provokes love-him-or-hate-him responses, but there's a deep sincerity to his artifice that goes beyond mere posing. Against all commercial wisdom, he's struggling to find his own cinematic poetry. Such an uncommon aspiration is worth checking out. --Bret Fetzer
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Pretentious Drivel
Two brothers go on a road-trip to find their on-the-lam anarchist father and in the process meet an assortment of odd characters.
"Simple Men" is possibly the most pretentious films I have ever seen. I watched this film to the end in the hope of finding something that resembled a plot but was sorely disappointed. All that happened was a bunch of characters, that I cared very little about, said a lot of things that I think were intended to be deep and profound but which I found to be ... Read More
Rating:  - Intelligent and absurdist filmmaking -- you will walk away smiling and thinking
Hal Hartley's best films are intellectual candy. They are full of provocations and delights, little moments that are both enigmatic and profoundly simple and true. This one is my favorite, at least so far. Two men on a search for their father, who may or may not be guilty of a profound wrong or disastrous mistake. Two women waiting for something or someone. In outline, the basic plot sounds like any number of Hollywood dramas or romantic comedies, but in this film there is something so fresh ... Read More
Rating:  - Wonderful movie, indifferent transfer
I won't speak to the joys of this movie...others have done so here much more eloquently than I ever could. I will, however, note that there are a few technical aspects of this dvd that bothered me. First is the aspect ratio. Hal Hartley is a master at framing a shot, and there are many times in this release that his framing is ruined, because the top or bottom is lopped off. There are also scenes in which a mood was set using dark, heavily tinted light. Thanks to (I assume) automated conversion to ... Read More
Rating: - Deeply Felt
I'm not one to go in length about films on Amazon, but I'll write a short little bit for this amazing film. I first saw this 10 years ago when I was in my teens and have never forgotten it, it really touched something inside of me, much like a great piece of art would affect you after seeing it up close for the first time.
Rating: - "Trouble and Desire" = Another Terrific Hartley Project
Hal Hartley never fails to entertain, never fails to engage my mind and emotions on a parallel level. Simple Men is no exception. The seemingly simple plot - two brothers in search of their missing dad - provides so much room for character growth that I wish there were an entire series of films centered around them.
With a hard-edged view of the world as: "There's no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire" (actually from a Fritz Lang ... Read More
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