Sadly Over-hyped

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I vaguely recall this series, and when it came out....I was interested to see if it would be like a movie I had seen many years before, with nearly the same title. At the time--I only had my distant memories of the movie, as NO ONE else seemed to even know of it's existence. But I recalled that the movie, called "the gun", was about a handgun, and it followed the gun from it's manufacture, sale and then through the various hands it passed, and what then transpired . I recalled that the gun was used in a robbery, for a protection device, and that near the end, it ended up being fed into a shredder with many other guns and such....but THIS gun survived. It would not be for several years later that I would actually SEE this movie, somehow finding a copy on Ebay some years ago--to find that my nearly 20 year old memories of the movie were pretty much right on--other than having forgot a couple of things....including the ending, where the scrap worker finds that gun intact, in the shredded materials, takes it home to use for protection--where it gets found by his young child, who thinks it is a toy.....Well...when I watched the series called "gun" in 1997, it WAS a lot like that movie--but not NEARLY as good. I saw a few episodes--and lost interest. There was just too much "cheese" in the show, such as the guy who thought he was the "man with no name" after watching Clint Eastwood movies. And I recall a guy, maybe Daniel Stern getting "tempted" by Kathy Ireland or such--to cheat on his wife, IIRC.All in all--a forgettable series. Find a copy of the 1974 movie with nearly the same name--SOMEHOW--and you will like it a LOT better!!

this is without doubt the biggest pile of crap i have ever seen. i bought this on DVD on the strength of it being produced by Robert altman and starring such an impressive bunch of actors.i figured it much at the very least be watchable. but i was wrong, the writing was the biggest insult to my intelligence but the direction and even the acting were just as laughable. how anyone can say this series was innovative escapes me. there is no explanation of how the gun ends up in its different locations and with no obvious passage of time to allow the viewer to perhaps fill in the blanks. add to that the ridiculous plot of each story and this entire series was nothing but frustrating. using the dvds for coasters would be too good for this abomination.

This film contains two almost totally unrelated vignettes connected by a common gun. A terrorist is apprehended in an airport, but before he is caught, he throws away a handgun that was previously used in an assassination. After he is released, he obsessively seeks out the gun, which has by now been found and sold to Walter (James Gandolfini), a security guard who takes it home to his wife (Rosanna Arquette) to protect herself when he is on the night shift. After various events (which I will refrain from spoiling), the gun ends up in a pawnshop. From there, it finds its way to the next vignette.It next belongs to the president of a country club in the Deep South. When he is bitten by a rattlesnake while on the golf course and dies, the gun is lost in the tall grass. The new president (Randy Quaid) is a philanderer who is fooling around with numerous women (Jennifer Tilly, Sean Young, Sally Kellerman, et al). His wife (Daryl Hannah) seems oblivious to all this and contents herself by cooking the favorite recipes of dead presidents. Suddenly, pieces of the gun are being received in packages addressed to all the president's lovers leading to his wife's discovery of his indicretions.The first story is a well-crafted drama that draws the viewer in with two storylines, one following the terrorist and the other following Walter's wife Lily. The second vignette is a short story by Robert Altman, which is an imbecilic farce. It is not clear how these two short films were pasted together. I can only guess that the first story was not commercially viable due to its short length.The acting in the first vignette was excellent. Gandolfini does his NYC working class shtick to perfection, strutting his corpulent Italian stuff around the set like a bloated stallion. Rosanna Arquette is equally good, playing the bored NYC housewife to the hilt and delivering a surprisingly accurate performance including an excellent New York accent.The second vignette had a good deal of recognizable talent, but nothing even remotely intelligent for them to say or do. The dialogue and story were so bad that it is hard to understand why these veteran actors would want to be associated with the project. Maybe Altman had some kind of damaging evidence against them. To their credit, Randy Quaid and Jennifer Tilly made the best of a bad situation and delivered a couple of comical moments amid the mindlessness.In rating this film, I had to split the rating in two. The drama I rated an 8/10 and the comedy a 2/10. Therefore, the average would be a 5/10. It is worth seeing the first one, but if you dare to continue, turn off your VCR/DVD and drink a six-pack. That is the only way second vignette is tolerable.

The show was exceptional, with unpredictable endings and a different story each time. I wish they would combine all the episodes into a movie. I don't know whether this show was the inspiration for a similar series taking place in the old west called 'Dead Man's Gun'. Again, the only thing that remained stable was the cursed weapon.