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starring: Maury Chaykin, Lindsey Connell, Shelley Cook, Alyson Court, Ted Danson
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780788823244
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
ISBN: 0788823248
Label: Walt Disney Video
Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Walt Disney Video
Release Date: March 13, 2001
Running Time: 107 minutes
Sales Rank: 70459
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1999
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Jerry and Tom is not the cartoonish comedy its culturally loaded title would suggest, but an off-beat buddy picture with a deft directorial touch that doesn't quite lift it from its verbose stage origins. Jerry (Sam Rockwell) is a fumbling car-lot gopher in the wrong place at the wrong time. He watches paternal, easygoing coworker Tom (Joe Mantegna) blithely strangle a man to death. He's a used-car salesman by day and a blue-collar hit man by night, and he gets his assignments right from the lot owner (a paunchy, punchy Maury Chaykin). Before long Tom is mentoring Jerry, a real cool customer who gets downright chilling in his sadistic delight in murdering strangers for cash. Veteran character actor Saul Rubinek makes his directorial debut in this adaptation and expansion of Rick Cleveland's short stage play, eschewing style (though his smooth scene transitions are lovely and inventive) for ensemble performance. His cast (including William H. Macy, Ted Danson, Peter Riegert, and a sly turn by Charles Durning as a retiring pro who may have done both Kennedy and Elvis--'I ain't saying I did, and I ain't saying I didn't') is uniformly excellent. It's a character piece for guys, where the violence is left largely (though not completely) off-screen and the working-class killers spend their hours talking about lost loves, family crises, and power tools. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Dark and funny but not quite great
Worth seeing if just for Mantegna, who fairly knocks this one out of the park. He's fully believable in his role and brings much heart and humor to both the character and the movie. Everyone else is good as well, though Danson and Macy hardly deserve credit for two-minute roles.
The directing is quite excellent, sharp and mostly unobtrusive; the pans from one scene to the next are very interesting and add a lot to the film's meaning rather than just calling attention to themselves and the director. ... Read More
Rating: - Not your usual kinda movie
This extra-quirky black comedy works by dint of its unpredictable dialogue and sudden deaths (so to speak--it's the tale of two suburban hit men), as well as some unusual moments--one of the guys, burying a body in the forest, stops to look at a doe, only a few yards away. In addition, the scene transitions are cleverly done, moving back and forth in time and season--summer changes to winter in a few seconds, taking maximum advantage of the film medium to segue based on a few small random items into a milieu ... Read More
Rating:  - Interesting, but not really a point
The movie was sort of interesting, but it didn't seem to have a point. I also didn't like the constant killings, even though they weren't actually shown. I wouldn't call it horrible, but I don't see a reason why anyone would want to see it. I don't even know why anyone bothered to make the movie.
Rating:  - Wry Black Comedy
One has to have a morbid sense of humor to enjoy this wry black comedy about two used car salesmen who moonlight as contract killers. The comedy is very tongue in cheek as these two miscreants matter-of-factly whack a dozen or so marked men while bickering over trivialities.
The gag is funny at first, but wears thin as we are treated to minor variations on the same theme for an hour and a half. Other than some innovative scene transitions, the direction by veteran TV director Saul Rubinek was nothing ... Read More
Rating:  - A brilliant tale of two ordinary hit men.
This is the movie that brings you into the world of the ordinary hit man -- well not the machine gun tottling Mafioso gunmen we're so used to watching in the big gangster movies. But the ordinary hit man who does his job as a necessary means to a living. The job is fine but there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The art of doing well is to kill with nonchalance. It is a hazardous occupation -- you go on as long as you can but don't know if you'll be a target yourself one day.
There are no ... Read More
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