Who payed the critics

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A textbook in contemporary writing, 'Smoke' tells a simple tale that, much like the photographs of his Brooklyn corner cigar store taken daily by lead character Auggie, as played in a highly nuanced performance by Harvey Keitel, can only be properly understood when one slows down. It is a story about storytelling which breaks down the binaries assumed to be inherent to our understandings of the world, in turn challenging our understandings of truth. Structured like a jazz improvisation having found its freedom by denying a previously established set of rules, the film is about chance, family, race, time, fiction, knowledge, and deception; all of which are pervaded heavily by the overarching forces that characterise life in the city. The ensemble cast lead separate lives that intertwine through their experiences of the city, and the connections they share speak for the struggles we all undergo in our respective searches for identity, meaning, and answers, especially in times when nothing presents itself as being distinctly one way or another. Through this fuzziness, the filters of smoke through which our perceptions are realised, we are exposed to a highly plausible possibility of what could or could not be the true nature of the lenses through which we see, and the language through which we interpret what we see.

It sucks when you have to analyse it for school, btw paul dies at the end

This was an independent film that appeared in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, all I knew about it was that it had some great names in the cast, and that it was recommended by critics, so I looked forward to watching it, from director Wayne Wang (Maid in Manhattan, Last Holiday). Basically the plot revolves around characters associated in some way with each other and a cigar store in New York, all these characters and subplots are woven together and drift and swirl like ethereal smoke from a cigar. Augustus 'Auggie' Wren (Harvey Keitel) is the manager of the store who has developed a "project" where he photographs the same spot outside his store at the same time every day, and nothing in his day to day life changes until past flame Ruby McNutt (Stockard Channing) comes visiting. Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) is a writer suffering from writer's block, and he is introduced to young African American drifter 'Rashid', real name Thomas Cole (Lost's Harold Perrineau) who saves his life, and he allows the young man to stay with him, while at the same time trying to find something to write about. Ruby comes to tell Auggie that she gave birth to a daughter, and that he is the father, and she wants some money, a few thousand, to help her struggling daughter Felicity (Ashley Judd) who is addicted to alcohol and drugs, and after some time he does help her. Rashid hides a package in Paul's apartment, this is money that he stole from criminal The Creeper (Malik Yoba), who does find the apartment and threaten Paul at gunpoint before being arrested, Rashid is trying to better himself, he manages to get a job in the cigar store, and he also hangs around outside the garage of mechanic Cyrus (Forest Whitaker), who lost his left arm in a car crash with his wife. Rashid, aka Thomas, will not reveal to Cyrus that he is his son, so Paul and Auggie go along with him to the garage, and the truth does come out, Cyrus is at first very angry, but the argument settles during a lunch with him and his new family. The final scene sees Auggie with Paul in a café telling him a story that he could use in a new Christmas themed book, and he tells a story of how a young man stole from his store, dropped his wallet, and some time later he tried to return it, an old lady answered and being blind assumed it was the young man, he went along with it and spent Christmas together, before leaving he took a camera from a pile in the bathroom, and when Auggie returned the next year she had died, a silent montage sees that this tale was true. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito as Tommy, José Zúñiga as Jerry and Stephen Gevedon as Dennis. The cast all do their parts very well, Keitel being cool and collected, Hurt being concerned and suppressed, Perrineau being mysterious and likable, Channing being needy and sporting an eye-patch, and Judd being feisty and nasty. There is no specific story, but the plot is all put together very well, how the characters connect together in some way is clever, the writing is witty and all the dialogue is engaging, it reminded me of something like Clerks, a near one location film where all you need is talking, it is a really interesting a most watchable drama. Very good!

The casting for this movie was terrible but would have been fine for a stage production. If viewed that way it's very enjoyable but a no-name cast could have made it fly. Shame on the producers for thinking it needed help. Hurt intermittently affects an inner city accent which is somewhere between south Boston and south Bronx putting it squarely in the Atlantic Ocean. Channing is not slutty enough, probably because she doesn't try to be. Keitel coasts through his role but is never really the guide his character might be. All of the characters come across as more sophisticated than what credibility demands. It is their individual stories and their interaction which should elevate them but the director has taken that step away from us - and it shouldn't have been. I still gave it a 7 because it is a good story.