Simple Men poster & wallpaper

Bethany Wright, Bill Sage, Chris Cooke

Simple Men opens with small-time hood Bill (Robert Burke from RoboCop 3) asking a bound and blindfolded security guard if he can have the guard's Virgin Mary medallion. "Be good to her a...( read more  read more... )nd she'll be good to you," says the guard. Immediately after, Bill is double-crossed by his girlfriend and his partner. From there, the plot goes off in a completely different direction: Bill and his younger brother Dennis (William Sage, High Art), a philosophy student, go off in search of their father, a former star shortstop who may have committed a bombing many years ago. Their only clue is a phone number on Long Island; they end up at a cafe run by Kate (Karen Sillas, Female Perversions), which is also the hangout for Elina Löwensohn (Nadja) and Martin Donovan (Hollow Reed, The Opposite of Sex). But plot is never the point in Hal Hartley movies (Trust, Amateur, Henry Fool); it's just a clothesline on which to hang odd, quirky scenes--moments like Donovan and Sage trying to imitate Löwensohn's dance movements to a Sonic Youth song, or a half-drunken conversation about pop music and self-exploitation. Hartley's deliberately stilted dialogue and stylized performances actually play better on video; the movie feels more intimate, making the humor more relaxed and fluid. Hartley is the kind of idiosyncratic filmmaker who provokes love-him-or-hate-him responses, but there's a deep sincerity to his artifice that goes beyond mere posing. Against all commercial wisdom, he's struggling to find his own cinematic poetry. Such an uncommon aspiration is worth checking out. --Bret Fetzer

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89% liked it

2,996 ratings

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Directed by: Hal Hartley

Release Date: January 1, 1992

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DVD Release Date: January 27, 2004

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Flixster Reviews (124)

  • dreamfaeries
    August 2, 2007
    dreamfaeries
    Very bad acting makes for a funny film...
  • SaintFrancisofAssisi
    June 8, 2008
    SaintFrancisofAssisi
    Not at all interested
  • jowanvanransbeeck
    February 16, 2008
    jowanvanransbeeck
    complicated social twist by 2 simple brothers with an idialistic -not so simple father-...
  • bucusuz
    January 22, 2008
    bucusuz
    dogru dürüst izlemek bi nasip olmadi altyazi problemleri yüzünden. uyusturamadik.
  • maxpowerhjays
    November 24, 2007
    maxpowerhjays
    absurd and not in a good way
  • SharpSharp
    August 21, 2007
    SharpSharp
    Great dance scene and circular conversation
  • goblue
    July 15, 2007
    goblue
    Brilliant deadpan humor from Long Island.
  • jklein8787
    May 14, 2007
    jklein8787
    My favorite Hal Hartley movie
  • SarahJoyFrost
    December 4, 2006
    SarahJoyFrost
    Yeah, i'd like to see what this is!

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Simple Men Trivia

  • Name the movie that features this quote: "We follow orders or people die. It's that simple."  Answer »
  • This movies is based on a classic John Steinbeck novel with The Depression as the setting. Gary Sinese (actor, director, co-producer), John Malkowitch (large, simple minded Lenny), also Ray Walston and Sherilyn Fenn. Title of movie is __  Answer »
  • In "A Simple Plan" (1998), the only survivor of three men who find a lost bag of cash is played by which actor?   Answer »
  • Which American directed the films 'Trust', 'Simple Men', 'The Unbelievable Truth', 'Amateur' and 'Fay Grim ', and in 1997 was made a Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic.?  Answer »
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