Buffalo '66 (1998)

Directed by Vincent Gallo
Written by Alison Bagnall & Vincent Gallo
Starring Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Ben Gazzara, Anjelica Huston, Kevin Corrigan

My Advice: Wait for MST3K.

Billy Brown (Gallo) has just been released from prison.  What does he want to do first?  Visit his parents (Gazzara and Huston), who have no idea he was in the slammer?  Kill the man who he believes put him behind bars?  No.  He wants to go to the bathroom.  But believe me, the other two are close runners-up.

This is the twisted world that we enter in Gallo's film--and it is truly his film.  He wrote the story, co-wrote the screenplay, directed, starred in it, and wrote and performed the music.  What amazes me are the "name" people he convinced to be dragged down with him.  The film is 110 minutes long, and could have been shortened by about 45 minutes if they had cut some of the long drawn out Awkward Pauses Within Conversations (TM), Gallo repeating his lines five times over in any given scene, and Gallo staring into a mirror or just the etrick pondering his miserable fate.  The film takes way too long to deliver nothing at all, a boring wanna-be shocking look at someone's life who has gone down the proverbial waterworks. 

Now don't get me wrong--there are some bright points to be had among all the guano.  Mickey Rourke has a brief cameo that I thought was decent.  It's good to see Jan-Michael Vincent in something that's not direct-to-video.  The musical score is quite good, to Gallo's credit, so much so that I want the soundtrack.  And some of the camera effects (a dinner scene shot from each person's perspective, flashbacks that literally burgeon outward from the character's skull, and others) are quite clever and hold your interest whereas the rest of the movie does not.

On the whole, this movie would probably be of interest to (a) film students and (2) people wanting to know how not to create an indie film.  Unfortunately, the bottom line is that it's tedious and pointless.  Better luck next time.

Buy it on DVD from Amazon!
Buy the soundtrack from Amazon!

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