You won't be disappointed!

Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Edmond Burke (William H. Macy) is a tired businessman who visits a Fortune Teller after a tiresome day. She tells him that he's not where he belongs. He leaves his wife. He goes into the night having various adventures in a strip club, a brothel, robbed by three card Monte, pawning his ring for a knife, and stabbing a pimp. He finds waitress Glenna (Julia Stiles) willing to listen. They go back to her apartment and have sex but he ends up killing her. Edmond is arrested and put in prison where his black cellmate rapes him.This David Mamet play gets turned into a movie. The material has a surreal feel. I wonder if the movie should accept that surrealism and expand on it visually. William H. Macy does an intriguing turn. It's not completely convincing. Mamet's writing and Edmond's constant philosophizing leave me intrigued but also wondering what the point is. Maybe the point is not to listen to fortune tellers.

In this David Mamet screenplay adapted from his stage play, William H. Macy as Edmond might best be described as Jerry Lundegaard (of 'Fargo') just taken a few steps further into the dark side. We don't really get any backstory on Edmond, but he appears to be a normally-functioning executive, that is until everything snaps.It starts at quitting time on Friday, he is handed a note with '1:15' written on it to remind him a Monday appointment has been moved to 1:15PM. For a reason not made known he appears mildly annoyed. Then he encounters a young couple making out in the elevator, then on the street comes upon a fortune-telling joint with the address '115'. Edmond takes this as a sign, has his fortune read, and is told he is not in a good place.All this kicks off the downward spiral so that Edmond loses the life he had known for 47 years and finds himself in a new one, and as the movie ends muses about 'fate' and whether we really have control of what we become.This is a strange movie, and as all Mamet stories the dialog is well-written, but I consider it too far-out for most audiences. But I am glad I saw it.SPOILERS: After going home Edmond tells his wife he is leaving, never coming back, he doesn't love her and no longer finds her interesting. He goes to a bar, and is advised by a patron to go to a certain club. It is a place for sex, which Edmond seems to want, but is shocked by the prices. He later hooks up with a girl working at a bar, they go to her apartment, Edmond seems to get crazier and crazier, in a fit of rage kills her. Edmond is a bigot, after he is in prison has a large, black cell-mate who demands sex. As the movie ends they are discussing aliens and fate, a number of strange subjects, and being bed time they curl up, together, in the bottom bunk, they have become a couple.

William H. Macy gives a credible performance here as a frustrated middle-aged businessman who goes on an Odyssey in New York's night life and seems the seedy, steamy end of it all.Macy is almost like a Howard Beale (I'm mad and I'm not going to take it anymore character.) Angry with life and looking for a purpose and direction, Macy, as Edmond, really and quickly descends into insanity. With violence, immorality and mayhem around him, Edmond may be perceived as the victim here. Remember Ronald Colman's twisted Othello, when he kills waitress Desdemona? A similar fate is waiting for our hero as well.The hell of prison life is well depicted here with Macy being sodomized and hence drawn into a homosexual relationship.This is one mad descent into a hell-like atmosphere. It's just too upsetting to watch deviance at its worst.

Edmond a kind of movie I would have loved watching anytime. David Mamet did an excellent job depicting the reality and troubles, an ordinary man has to face. It looks so close to reality where everything showed appeared true. Edmond is a story of simple man Edward Burke who left home on account of his boring life to seek some manly pleasure but end up getting bugged everywhere he went. Even after trying he failed to get himself out of the mess which eventually made him loose his nerves. The movie is quite sexy and passionate .But what I liked most about it was the question that Edmond put up..& his views about how human race is living,as he encountered the harsh world & very much are those questions make sense though they may seemed to be associated with some philosophical theories. William H Macy again showed how natural his acting is! In short, Edmond is really an impressive movie but I would confess that its equally shocking and disturbing as well considering it is quite near to the kind of world we try to survive in...