User Reviews

Like so many featured in it, I would have never known this film existed if I didn't read the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it is also interesting to be directed by, written by and starring Vincent Gallo, who I had never heard of before. Basically Billy Brown (Gallo) has been released from prison after serving five years for a crime he did not commit, he has a dilemma though as he has told his parents, father Jimmy (Ben Gazzara) and mother Jan (Anjelica Huston), that he is married with a successful career. The first thing he is trying to do is find a place to pee, being very desperate, and he finally finds that running into a dance studio during a tap dancing lesson. With what he has told his parents in mind, he winds up kidnapping young tap dance student Layla (Christina Ricci), forcing her of course to drive him where he wants to go, change her name and of course pretend to be his wife. Billy's only instructions are to make him look in front of the parents, and she allows herself to go with everything he says, and Jimmy and Jan enjoy their dinner with their son and his pretend wife. But is apparent she is not just helping him out however she can, this also includes later having some photos taken together, but Layla may in fact truly find some attraction towards Billy, even with his objections not to touch him intimately. The subplot of the story, seen in some flashbacks, is that Billy went to jail because he lost a large cash bet on the Super Bowl XXV, Buffalo Bills against the New York Giants, in 1991, and he wants revenge on the man indirectly responsible, Scott Woods (Bob Wahl). Billy is struggling against these demons, chronic loneliness and his severe depression, but eventually he does slowly open up and give in to his feelings with Layla, in the end there is some form of resolution. Also starring Mickey Rourke as The Bookie, Rosanna Arquette as Wendy Balsam, Jan-Michael Vincent as Sonny, Kevin Pollak as TV Sportscaster, Alex Karras as TV Sportscaster and Kevin Corrigan as Rocky the Goon. Gallo has created an inventive and intriguing story, and directs the film is very stylistic fashion, but of course it is his on screen presence that is best, being an unlikeable but sympathetic character, as well as the beautiful Ricci being just as compelling as the one who is falling for him, a dark and unusual drama. Very good!

No, I didn't misspell that. It stands for "black" and "bleak".

Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo) is released from prison, but hours later has not left the bench outside the prison gate. It seems as though he has no place to go - that is, until he has to pee. He is grubby looking, in tatty clothes and pants that are too short. His look screams, "low budget".

He meets Christina Ricci's character, Layla, in town. He is nasty to her, yet she gives him a quarter for the phone when asked. She overhears him talking to his mother. He keeps repeating who he is, and it gives the impression that he's been away for a while, or maybe Mom's feeble-minded. Layla overhears him telling her grandiose lies.

His lies include a wife, whom he's goaded to produce. After he hangs up, he grabs Layla in desperation and off they go, in her car. He tells her that she will pose as his "wife", and is to make him "look good", under threats. She has chances to escape but chooses not to.

While Billy was in prison, he got his friend "Goon", who is slow but loyal, to visit and agree to send Billy's pre-written letters to his parents on a monthly basis. These included stories of his "successful, jet-setting life" (it's not made clear how the locally-postmarked letters are meant to fool his parents).

Billy and Layla arrive at the parents' house and Billy's father is not fooled. The parents are cold and selfish. It becomes clear that Billy's mother remembers little or nothing of his life's details. He is simply not important to her. Only football is, and at one point, she absentmindedly comments that she regretted Billy's birth because it kept her from seeing the Buffalo Bills play in the Championship that year (I assume she named her son after the team). The father is a lecherous slime-bag who looks for any excuse to play "motorboat" with Layla's boobs while telling her, "Daddy loves you".

Daddy didn't make it as a singer, and when Layla asks if he has any recordings of himself, he takes her to a bedroom and sings to her over a prerecorded backing record, under a spotlight, while she sits, Baby Doll-like, on the bed. Creepy.

Layla later asks to see Billy's childhood pictures, but there is only one! It's of him with his puppy. She asks what became of the pup, and we see a flashback that shows Daddy killing it in front of Billy, because it peed in the house. Daddy tells her, "It ran away".

With dinner over, they leave. Layla chooses to remain with Billy after leaving his parents' house. They get a room. She wants him. He recoils. We discover how emotionally isolated he is. We find out that his only relationship with a girl was fantasised. I suppose that brings out that thing that some women seem to enjoy doing, where she makes him her Personal Reclaimation Project. She tries to break down his resistance to human contact and tenderness. She barely breaks through at all. They fall asleep, with him close to her. Billy intends to stay only until 2am, when Scott Woods is due to be at his strip club.

Woods, a former Bills player, missed the potential game-winning kick in a game upon which Billy had bet heavily. Billy couldn't cover the bet, and the bookie let him off by having Billy take the 5 year rap for a crime committed by a friend of the bookie. Billy believes Woods took a bribe to lose, and blames Woods for ruining his life.

When Billy says he has to go out, she has the feeling that he won't be back, and ends up telling him she loves him. He promises to return, but his real plan is to go to Scott Woods' strip club and kill him, then kill himself.

Before entering the club, he calls Goon, makes a bequest, and apologises to Goon for being mean and nasty to him all the time. Goon suspects Billy's going to do "something bad".

In the club, Billy comes face-to-face with Scott Woods, a fat, slobbering drunk with naked girls hanging off of him. Woods offers Billy a drink. During this exchange, Billy fantasises pulling out the gun and through some nice f/x, we see frozen shots of the homicide and the suicide, along with a scene of Billy's parents at his grave, listening to football on the radio until the father wants to leave to eat.

All of that brings on an epiphany for Billy, and he decides that life is worth living. He leaves, and on the outside payphone, calls Goon back and tells him that he can't have his stuff after all, and that he met a girl who loves him. He goes back to treating Goon like crap (which shows that love hasn't turned Billy into a complete sap). He also says that he couldn't kill Woods because, "he seemed like a nice guy" (how he came to that conclusion, I have no idea. Offering a drink seems a gesture too feeble to resolve years of hatred). In any case, his new plan is to get back to Layla.

I thought the "epiphany" came out of the blue. Surely Billy would've realised long before that moment, that his parents wouldn't have missed him. But I suppose he so desperately craved their approval, that he was in complete denial about their utter indifference to him. Who knows? What was really missing was any information about Layla. Who was she? And why did she behave the way she did?

I felt that the wrap-up was too quick, and pat.

The acting is great, I liked the shots, and the movie is overall interesting and original. I do like it, but I don't LOVE it. It has a good start, but as it progresses, we only see Billy's development (kind of), while Layla just plays the naive teenage girl. We are given no explanatiom to why she likes Billy, or how she just goes off with Billy for a whole day, like, does she even have parents? Christina Ricci played the part well, I just feel like they could've gone more in depth with her character. Also, the romance part of the story wasn't as convincing as they wanted to make it be. The film focuses on Billy, who is by the way, a great character, but it ends by leaning on the romantic relationship of the two, which is just not good enough. I feel like the film would've been better if, after Billy almost kills himself and buys Layla hot chocolate and a heart-shaped cookie, he finds the room empty. And then maybe kills himself, idk. Or even if we just get to see some sort of an ending instead of a happy ever after being hinted, which, possibly, ruined the movie for me. It's a solid movie, but just isn't a kicker.

You know Twilight? Where like, the guy is perfect and dreamy and all the teenage girls want to marry someone as perfect and dreamy as him? Yah, F that.

When I showed my friend this movie his first response was "What does she see in him?" I was surprised. I didn't get what he didn't get. Yah, he's flawed. THAT'S THE POINT. It's easy to love someone who's perfect---anyone can do that. But to love someone so terribly insecure, wounded, paranoid, irritable, and a million other things--? That takes real love. Layla isn't weak for loving such a person, she is incredibly strong. Real life romance requires people being able to conquer the bad in order to grow, and that's what the whole entire point of this movie.

Layla and Billy face their own, individual challenges.

Layla has the emotional and social intelligence that apparently some of the audience lacks. Right from the beginning, right after their rough introduction, she sees through to his vulnerability when he is talking on the phone at the dance studio, telling lies about how he's at an expensive hotel. There is a sudden, short cut to her listening in on the bathroom, with a sad look on her face. She can see by the things that he pretends to be what he really is. Because if someone puts on an act, logic follows that's not what they are really like. So she sees him acting tough and high status, and uses simple powers of deduction to conclude that he is really sensitive and insecure. She doesn't fall in love with what he does but what he hides. What is hidden is his true self, and she lets him show it to her. She begins to see deeper into the reasons for his behavior when she is at his parents house. She is trying to talk to his parents and is being completely ignored. She gives a brief crushed and sympathetic look to the camera (Billy's perspective) before turning her attention to the TV as his mother commands her to "watch this play." She is extremely observant and knows how to give Billy a comfortable distance while simultaneously slowly coaxing him closer e.g. asking for a handshake and giving him a hug. Also when he indirectly confesses that he wasn't actually in a relationship with Wendy like he said he was, instead of calling him out or making him feel bad she asks afterward, "Did you have any other girlfriends?" This isn't the sign of a stupid, weak, one-dimensional character. She has a very contained personality, but she is the one who is more emotionally secure and stable, and acts as the rock that Billy never had. I thought it was all pretty obvious, but I guess if you're one-dimensional yourself, then yes, she's probably going to seem one-dimensional too.

But the main focus is the challenge that Billy faces. While Layla is clear and upfront about her feelings, Billy has to struggle with a choice: to act on anger, hate and hurt, and to take his own life, or to take the path of love, get rid of his deep rooted negativity, and embrace life. He is faced with this struggle up until the last 5-10 minutes of the film, when he is face to face with the man who represents all the awful things in his life, and debates whether or not to shoot him and then himself. Throughout the whole movie he periodically tries to make good on his plans, calling the club, checking to see what time Scott Woods comes in, and so on. He has to wait, and spends this time with Layla. After looking Scott Woods in the face, and letting go of everything bad, you see a complete transformation into a sweet and happy man who has let go of his demons and found a reason to live. Love kept him from killing himself. Really, how more romantic can you get? I think another thing people have missed is the fact that it's supposed to be funny. It's a darker sense of humor, which I could see not everyone getting. But you're not supposed to take character flaws so seriously; they're exaggerated for comedic effect. And I want to say that I am from Buffalo, and he is dead on. I know people from Buffalo are mad at him, but come on, it's pretty much true. All the way from the houses covered in Bills merchandise to the annoying flat "a" in our accents which makes everyone else think we're Canadian. The whole movie has a consistent feel to it The bland and muted colors used throughout the film give it an ugly-beauty sort of feel which is very accurate to Buffalo's charm.

This movie doesn't spell out for the audience everything they should think and feel. You have to interpret and analyze not the words of the conversations, but what they're trying to convey about the dynamics between people. The characters, motivations, feelings, are not force-fed, and I prefer it that way. If you aren't able to digest deeper meanings in movie, and need direct dialog and formulaic characters, then you have no business snooping around in independent films in the first place. And the whole entire thing was contingent on the last few minutes. If you don't sit down a watch a whole movie, what are you doing rating and reviewing it?

Anyway---the reason why this movie is so great is because it doesn't try to push the common delusions that romance is all fairy-tales and bunny tails, but instead examines what love really is. Love isn't being rescued by Edward Cullen, it's being kidnapped by Billy Brown.

I have wrestled with whether to trash this movie for Gallo's or to recognize that I don't hate it and that it has an odd sweetness in Layla (Ricci)'s and Billy (Gallo)'s relationship. It doesn't make a bit of sense to me. He is abusive to her. She seems like a sweet girl without the sort of emotional hangups to tolerate the abuse of someone like Billy. Billy is a horrible person- egotistical and abusive. The script, to me, doesn't make a plausible case that Layla would stay with Billy. We don't know enough of her background to believe that she would tolerate such abuse and bad treatment. He kidnaps her. He berates her for being TOO good at giving a good impression of him. He is jealous of her involvement with guys before she'd even met him. Why she stays with him is a bit of a mystery. This is one of the major shortcomings of the movie. It's hard to believe that someone would tolerate such unsolicited treatment. If we knew a bit more about her background, we might find her acceptance of him more understandable.

All that said however, for whatever reason, she does stay with him and there is the suggestion of love at the end of the movie. This makes the movie magical and really a little sentimental. It's ultimately a love story for hipsters.

I can't trash this movie because I'm not cynical enough to do that. It is a sweet movie at heart and it is as though Gallo dares us to not like Billy. Well, I don't like him, but if someone does, then I wish he and the girl all the luck in the world.

Skinny, ugly, unkempt and unlikeable Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo) is released from prison after 5 years and decides to drop in on his uncaring parents (Angelica Huston and Ben Gazzara) who only truly love the Buffalo football team (carefully not identified as the Bill's). Since he has told his parents that he is successful government employee with a loving wife he kidnaps the remarkably forgiving Layla (Christina Ricci) to pretend to be his wife. Unbeknownst to everyone Billy is out to kill the former field goal kicker for Buffalo whom he sees as being responsible for everything that went wrong in his life.

This is a very quirky and compelling film with some good performances and a lot of nuances, this seems to be very much a film about perceptions.

For Christina Ricci this one of a string of good performances that saw her breach that gap between child and adult roles apparently without a hitch.

The winter scenes of Buffalo are very bleak and really seem to ring true.

Despite his profoundly un-enjoyable follow-up effort "Brown Bunny" Vincent Gallo is obviously a talented film maker and it is unfortunate that he has not contributed more.