Cheap Paris Trout (Video) (Dennis Hopper, Barbara Hershey, Ed Harris) (Stephen Gyllenhaal) Price

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Customer Reviews of Paris Trout

a good movie, what was that guy thinking???
I think that reviewer from Australia doesnt' knwo what he's talking about. I cant see how he doesnt' realize how the waving of the fans in the courtroom scene in the movie sets the scene and reveals how dedicated the township is to see some form of justice done, desptie the scortching heat. Also if one notices the balcony filled with blacks and the fact that NONE of them have fans, it further explains the gulf in class of society. FOr anyone to overlook that, and go further to claim that fans, fans! are upstaging the actors is simply rediculous. I hope whoever wrote that review will read this one and realize the error, and stupidity of his ways.
I personally think the movie was fantstic, and am surely inpired to read the novel.
I would also like to state that the Australian fellows review seems distracted and jumbled, and will request that it be removed from the front page of the reviews.
I believe Ed Harris' performance to be spectacular and very heartfelt. One really understands and empathizes with his confusion and passion over the atrocities performed on paris' wife. I give the story line and acting 4 stars, but the screen writing and production of the film is what earned a pair of stars from me.

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Gyllenhaal with a hook in his mouth
I partially blame Stephen Gyllenhaal for ending Debra Winger's film career. He mis-directed her in A Dangerous Woman, and after Billy Crystal tied a pigeon to her head in Forget Paris, she didn't have a chance. (Jessica Lange was great enough to survive her encounter with Gyllenhaal in Losing Isaiah). Perhaps he is only capable of supporting lesser actors like Barbara Hershey, who he has used a number of times. (Their Killing in a Small Town for TV is probably their best collaboration). Here Hershey is the narrator of the story of the trial of her husband Dennis Hopper for shooting a little black girl. Hopper's character is so mean that he can wear a buttoned-up stiff white-collared shirt in the humid South. His appearance recalls Robert Mitchum's homicidal preacher from Night of the Hunter, and his haircut screams psychotic. Since we are presented with the truth of the killing at the start, and because we are in the South and the victim is black, we know that the verdict is inconsequential. The all white jury tips you off too. Gyllenhaal even gives the courtroom audience hand-held fans which flap like insect wings and upstage the trial scenes. He seems more interested in the sado-masochistic relationship between husband and wife. Granted these scenes give some life to the otherwise sluggish pacing, and they also feature an odd fetish for glass. Glass is broken, a bottle is used to rape Hershey, and Hopper covers his bedroom floor with panes to ensure his wife does not enter. This kind of detail also carries over to Hopper's invalided mother, whom he watches being bathed in the opening scene, but who's condition is never given any payoff. The only thing remarkeable about the whole film is the formal dialogue, and the fact that people in the South tend to resist being shot. Hopper might have triumphed in his role with a better director. It seems as if he is ready to rage but hasn't been given the opportunity, since Gyllenhaal cuts away from him. Ed Harris initially brings some tenderness to his role as Hopper's lawyer, but the brutality of his sex with Hershey only reminds us of her bottle encounter. We are told that the oldest lesson of the South is: it is easier to bury than forget. Since this film was intended as a feature but then shown on TV, it seems the opposite is true for Gyllenhaal.