User Reviews

Big City Blues was a failed experiment of a film that would later be repeated successfully in films like Boogie Nights and Crash. It's the story of five characters, two hit men, two drag queens and a prostitute who meet up in a deserted Miami mansion one fateful night.

The drag queens Giancarlo Esposito and Arye Gross are the most interesting of the quintet. Especially Esposito who is in a journey of transitioning, but not quite sure if she wants to complete the change. The names in the cast are the hit men, Burt Reynolds and William Forsythe who do their best, but are defeated by a lousy script and poor direction. I can see Reynolds was cast here as he was in Boogie Nights, but in that film there was a cohesion as all the participants were involved in the pornography industry and were all interesting characters.

Georgina Cates is the prostitute and she's along for the ride, also defeated by poor direction. Her character as a hooker who aspires for something more could have been a lot better.

Crash is a film along the same lines and it was a Best Picture Oscar winner. Would this have turned out as well.

I bought this DVD for $5.99... A Big Mac meal would have been more satisfying, and I'd have change coming. Much too dark... Although the trailer on the DVD looked like it was timed right. For some reason, and it seems to be a recurring theme here in the comments section, 80% of this movie is almost black. The story was a Pulp Fiction-esque wanna be, missing that all important "story" element. These characters are flat and manufactured with no real goal. Or if they had a goal, it wasn't shared with the audience. The tie in at the end was too "hand of god." I know that movies need convenience as a device, but this was just too coincidental. Not that these characters were destined to come together, but the scene that was written solely for the purpose of coming together. "Hey, look at me, I'm Tarantino!" says the director. "No, you're not," says the box office.

"Big City Blues" is terrible. The main problem is the lighting. You can't see anything. I mean it. The whole movie looks like it was shot in absolute darkness.

How can they release this on video? Besides the lighting, everything else is wretched. From what I could see of Reynolds and Forsythe, they couldn't care less. I think the plot was about two hit men and their targets. The idea of a "Pulp Fiction" with Burt Reynolds is interesting, but this mess can only hurt him. Thankfully, not a lot of people will see this.

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If you liked watching Mel Gibson in Million Dollar Hotel then you might enjoy watching Burt Reynolds in yet another film so bad it could never be distributed. I can only attest to the DVD version so maybe the VHS version is better quality wise but the movies night and dark scenes have been so poorly done that everythings seems red. I first thought my DVD players was messed up. It wasn't. If you insist on watching it I recommend you adjust the color on your TV until it is black and white. If you don't you will never be able to get through the film. If you do it will simply remind you of a poor film students attempt to revist the style of Pulp Fiction.

This film describes the experiences of a couple of hit men (one of them Burt Reynolds), a prostitute, and two drag queens over the interval of a few hours on one night in Miami. The convergent storylines eventually bring all the people together at one place and time. The movie was mildly entertaining, but the big problem was that everything happens at night and many scenes were literally under-exposed to the point that it was impossible to see what was happening. In a few scenes you can actually see where they tried to "stretch" the developing process to save the images. Somebody didn't know how to operate a movie camera. Amazing that this film was even released!

When I saw the cast of an interesting sound of title I thought it's gonna worth, but the film got a one Big-Blues –Problem ... a director. Usually when story is written and directed by one person, film is going to be good, but in this particular example, this law doesn't work. I mean this could be a good film, well but it wasn't ... Big City Blues got some funny scenes, good (as usually) acting by Giancarlo Esposito, and nothing more.

Big City Blues was one of those films that was Just to hard to follow.

I thought the quality of the movie was shocking, it was always to dark, so dark That I could hardly see what the hell was going on half the time.

The only good thing going for this film was Burt Reynolds, Without him the movie would have been so much more worse.

Oh and yes William Forsythe was also fantastic.

This is a movie that wonders off in all different directions. Do your self a big favor and stay the hell away from this film, Unless your like me and are a super Burt Reynolds fan and will watch movies that are so incredibly bad just because Mr. Reynolds is in it.

OK, well to start off with, ya the movie had a lot of problems.

The lighting was almost embarrassing, the story was a little strange and somewhat hard to follow.

However, I still liked it.

To truly understand this movie, you have to have seen it a few times because every time you watch it you'll see something that you missed the last time. Once you understand everything that's going on, it's actually a very interesting movie. It's story is based around the fact that every decision you make will impact you in a huge way.

Not to mention the great acting! Reynolds and Forsythe were fantastic in this film.

To sum up. The acting was good, the story was charmingly creepy and damn funny.

The film follows three storylines and the Reynolds/Forsythe storyline is *very* derivative of Pulp Fiction (2 gangland thugs make the rounds for their boss and cross paths with wacky people). If you turned up for a Burt Reynolds film, you are likely in the wrong headspace. This is a quirky indie 90s flick done when Reynolds was trying to get a career comeback like Travolta's. He would hit with his other film that year, Boogie Nights. The other two threads are the gold in this film. Giancarlo Esposito and Arye Gross are transgender women out on a night on the town. Gross tells a series of parables to help Esposito decide if she wants to go through with a sex change. The humour and wacky of the film is in Gross' stories including a surprising scene featuring pvc frog costumes. The heart of the film is Georgina Cates, a call girl with a heart of gold. I feel like her's is the key story and the others are to draw you in first. Cates is seeking her doppleganger, the person who is exactly like her but made better choices. Along the way, we get some very memorable scenes with her clients. I found this on Tubi for free and it was a bargain at twice the price.

This is a movie for anyone bored with mainstream, Hollywood fare. It is a well acted black comedy that follows three groups of people over one night. Burt Reynolds and William Forsythe are excellent in the principal roles, though good performances can be seen throughout the film. Overall, highly recommended.

Big City Blues is young, hip & stylish! A very entertaining movie. If you liked Pulp Fiction, you will love Big City Blues! Clive Fleury is positively clever and definetly the next Quentin Tarantino! Brilliantly and artistically filmed - The movie shows us the hidden underworld of prostitutes, drag queens, and hit men and how all their lives come together in a very REAL way! I would tell you more about it but I don't want to spoil it for you, but the scene with the dancing human frogs was beyond visually stimulating...

A MUST SEE!

This movie is about two hit men, a prostitute and a couple of gay men. They all pass each other over one eventful night and finally meet in a shoot-out at an apartment. I really liked the off beat humor of this movie. You get the feel of it straight away from the opening spoof of a French film and there are some crazy scenes in it - including a frog ball. I thought the story and the acting were really good. The Latin flavored music too fitted well. I highly recommend this film .