Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Barfly was written directly for the screen by one of my all-time favorite authors, Charles Bukowski. Mickey Rourke has never given a finer performance than as Henry, a "Bukowski-esque" writer/barfly struggling to survive along with the other dregs of society. Faye Dunaway shines as Wanda, Henry's newly found, (sometimes lover) drinking partner. Directed by Barbet Schroeder, Barfly did not find a large audience but critics and the lucky few to see this film in the theater became instant fans, knowing they have just viewed a small masterpiece.However the real thrill is Dunaway appearing at a time when her Hollywood star was suffering still from "Mommie Dearest". I find her performance here probably one of her best and she captures beautifully the louche attitude of a beautiful woman too attracted to the bottle and heading for oblivion. This film is certainly up there with Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown and Network in showing what she was capable of when well directed and stretched.Also special mention should be made of the two support actors J. C. Quinn as Chinaski's friend and Alice Krige as the wealthy and attractive publisher attracted to the doomed Chinaski and not realising she is out of her depth when confronted by Dunaway. Add to this a very memorable cast of cheap bar low-lifes who all feed off each other and some smart art direction and camera-work. The several shots of daylight streaming into those dark room long bars when the bar door is opened and the inhabitants react dazedly captures the milieu of their twilight existence perfectly, and the bitter sweet ending of having gone full circle in the story depicts the entrapment of such an existence beautifully.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

If Martin Scorsese directed a movie in slow motion and dirtied it up a little more, he'd get the ultimate foray into a humans bout with alcoholism. So here, I give you the little seen gem from 1987, Barfly.Mickey Rourke in the title role, takes method acting to a whole new level. I'm not sure what happened between takes, but I feel that he might have stayed in character, didn't shower, probably wore the same clothes, and went by the name of his lead, Henry Chinaski. He drinks like a fish, inhabits the slumming L.A. bars, and gets into fights with a bartender named Eddie (played effectively by Sly Stallone's brother, Frank Stallone). When he's not fighting, failing to pay his rent, and aspiring to be a writer, he gets the attention of a beautiful older woman (another drunk played by Faye Dunaway as Wanda Wilcox). They form an interesting relationship that anchors a large majority of what's on screen. As they wallow in their drunkenness, Henry is pursued by a detective and a women news writer who wants to publish one of his stories.Almost feeling like a film told in a dreamlike state, Barfly is a character study that revels in irony and self-loathing. It's dirty, free forming, and harbors grubby, all too realistic performances. The side characters are people who you'd find in an alley and kinda look like homeless vagabonds. This is truly Los Angeles at its most depressing and most hideous. The script is based on the writings and life of the famed novelist Charles Bukowski. And the short running time sort of ends and begins in the same exact way. There are some quotable lines, an honest, demented take on the concept of dying, and a cameo by the screenwriter and novelist himself.Ultimately, it's Rourke's shining moment and Barfly succeeds because of him and almost nothing else. During the first half of the proceedings, his inebriated Henry utters the line, "don't worry, no one's loved me yet." Well this critic loved Mickey's realistic, balls out performance. Forget his Oscar nominated turn in The Wrestler. This is "bar" none, his best work.

"I've never been lonely. I've been in a room - I've felt suicidal, depressed, beyond awful - but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and just cure what was bothering me. It's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there? Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves." - Bukowski "Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink." - Bukowski Based on the writings of the legendary poet/author Charles Bukowski, "Barfly" is a somewhat interesting film from French film director Barbet Schroeder. The plot? Mickey Rourke plays Henry Chinaski, an alcoholic who bounces from one menial job to the next. Though intelligent and highly attuned to his surroundings, and though he's adept at writing poetry and prose, Henry spends most of his time sucking booze and hanging out with night owls and barflies.The film's second half watches as Henry strikes up a relationship with Wanda (Faye Dunnaway), a fellow drunk, and Tully, a high flying publisher. Along the way he feuds with Eddie, who represents everything Henry deplores: superficiality, shallowness, self-promotion, work, success, money etc. Henry's last act choice is thus familiar. He's asked to choose between either intoxicated anonymity or a writing career (which he perceives to be selling out). "You're trapped in a cage with golden bars," Henry tells others, but how much is his own cage a product of his own personal fears and more self-destructive traits?Charles Bukowski's prose has a certain rhythm to it; it flies off the page. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre would declare Bukowski the most important American writer of the 21st century. But whilst Schroeder's film contains a number of great lines and some good dialogue, he can't quite capture the distinct tempo of Bukowski. Unsurprisingly, Bukowski himself was hugely critical of the film.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

This is one of those rare films that really captures "The down and out!" But, really you're down and out IF you ARE down and out!....Barfly shows the reality of some lives...Wake up..Drink...Drink all day...Drink all night...Drink right before you sleep...and start all over again the next day...I know people that are like each of the characters in this movie...I LOVE THIS FILM!!! truly as real as it gets! Maybe not the fighting all the time?..Could happen like that..But, the drunks I know...Really are too drunk all the time to raise a fist except to summon the barkeeper.....and even then, that sometimes is too much!!....But, everyone's story is different!....For some reason I can watch this film again and again...maybe it's the Jerri springer factor?... You know seeing others worse than yourself?....Either way...a MUST see!!! Rourke is awesome in this one...As usual!!!