Smoke Movie Review
Movies change our lives, for better and worse. Smoke is the movie that broke my heart after I saw it with a male viewer I respected and considered a friend. We got a lift from someone who asked me what I thought of the movie, so I told him. For the guy who saw the movie with me, the friendship ended right there, although it took me three years to believe it. I'm a fatalist, so I'm convinced it would have ended anyway. But over a movie? Smoke takes place in and around Auggie Wren's Brooklyn Cigar Store. The stars are Harvey Keitel as Auggie and William Hurt as Paul Benjamin, a sad writer whose wife was killed before the movie begins; Harold Perrineau Jr. as Thomas (Rashid) Cole, a troubled kid whom Paul tries to help; and Forest Whitaker as Cyrus, the kid's father. Jared Harris, Giancarlo Esposito, and Victor Argo are Jimmy Rose, Tommy, and Vinnie, some of the other sketchily drawn characters in the orbit of Auggie's cigar shop. Unlike my companion, I was extremely unmoved by 112 minutes of well-acted hot air. In a feature-length study of guys where the only women with screen time of any consequence are (1) killed and not heard, (2) in a few sequences to flesh out a guy, namely Stockard Channing as Ruby, Auggie's ex-wife, and (3) in one sequence only, namely Ashley Judd as Ruby's strung-out daughter, I'd just as soon the male screenwriter blue-penciled them from the flick's first draft. If women don't serve any real function in a story about men (AND vice versa, naturally), they don't need to be there at all. I tried to explain this in the car and unwittingly blue-penciled myself out of AND derailed The Friendship, Ouch.
1995 (R) 112m/C Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Stockard Channing, Forest Whitaker, Harold Perrineau Jr., Ashley Judd, Mary Ward, Victor Argo, Jared Harris, Giancarlo Esposito, Mel Gorham; D: Wayne Wang; W: Paul Auster; C: Adam Holender; M: Rachel Portman. Nominations: Independent Spirit Awards ‘96: Best Supporting Actor (Perrineau); Screen Actors Guild Award ‘95: Best Supporting Actress (Channing). VHS, LV, Closed Caption