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List Price: $29.95 | | Label: Polygram Video
Salesrank: 42158
Released: November 18, 1997 |
| Our Price: $30.00 |
| Used Price: $6.24 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
David Duchovny is a blocked author with a fascination for outlaw killers who hatches a plan to road trip through America's mass-murder landmarks to finish his book. He enlists his frustrated photographer girlfriend Michelle Forbes, who desperately wants to leave the East Coast for L.A., to illustrate the tome, and they advertise for riding partners. Luckily for them, they wind up with a veteran killer, the greasy trailer-park ex-con Brad Pitt, who decides to skip parole with his cowering child-woman girlfriend Juliette Lewis. Duchovny is enamored by gun-toting Pitt's recklessness and lawless disregard for, well, everything; he's simultaneously terrified and thrilled by Pitt's brutal beating of a barfly. Meanwhile, Pitt's leaving a trail of corpses in their wake.
Directed with a cool remove by Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds 2000), Kalifornia falls somewhere between Badlands and Natural Born Killers. Pitt brings a ferocious magnetism to his part, but it's still hard to buy genial Duchovny's odd attraction; Juliette Lewis conveys a terrifying sense of victimization with her poor dumb creature. Despite the film's best efforts, it never really plumbs the psyche of Pitt's simmering psycho--he's just plain bad, you know--but it does fashion an effective little thriller out of the tensions brewing in the restless quartet. --Sean Axmaker
Kalifornia Reviews:
Perfect! 
2009-09-04 - Came on time and packaged well. Loved watching the DVD with my boyfriend who had been wanting this movie for awhile!
Effective little road movie thriller 
2009-07-20 - I am working hard, lately, at reducing the stack of DVDs that has accumulated at home while I didn't pay attention. I have a faible for road movies and I rather like Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis, so here we go.
An aspiring writer tries to see a deserving project in a road trip to different murder sites along the road from East to West Coast. What an idiot!
His frustrated, attractive, and strong willed photographer girlfriend likes the idea of moving to California.
To save gas cost, they advertise for paying travel companions. They end up with the worst of all possible solutions: a violent killer on the run from parole, with his mentally retarded girl friend. (his parole probably is not from a murder conviction, so don't get yourselves worked up here!)
Weakness: Pitt's bad guy is just plain bad, there is no further contour in him. Easy job, Brad. The writer's (Duchovny) fascination with him, even after he really ought to have seen through him, as his girlfriend has, is irritating, but more plausible, if we see it as a mixture of cowardice and curiosity. After all, he wants to write about murderers, so here he can study one...
Lewis is so convincing in her retardation, that one believes she is not acting, which for sure means, she is fantastic. Or retarded?
Chilling, Vicious & Off-The-Charts Good!!--Brad Pitt Is A Savage & Perversely Sexy Beast In This Early Role!!
2009-07-19 - I had this movie on VHS back in the early 90's, and it was
one of ones that I just had to buy again once I replaced all
my old VHS's with DVD's by 2004 and 2005.
Brad Pitt's chilling potrayal of the vicious,
just-this-side-of-an-animal, serial/thrill killer "Early Grace"
is unsung as one of his best roles!
As beautiful as Brad is to look at, coupled with his natural
charisma, it's just amazing how he pulled this character up
from some deep dark place in his psyche that he should
never touch on again!
It seems that he drew on his Missouri/Oklahoma roots
for Early's raspy southern drawl and that stomach-churning
habit he has of inhaling and eating his own snot or
spitting it out every 5 seconds. (Yuck!)
He seems as if he'd just learn to walk upright a few days before...
he's brutal, raw, full of animal cunning, is completely devoid
of any sense of humanity and conscience about what he does
from one minute to the next, he grunts and growls, and
sees a woman as only as vessel for his lust and to be
an obiedient mindless slave! (Or Else, BANG!!--Next!)
Enter, Juliette Lewis, who she and Pitt were actually
an item back then...Nobody can play a clueless, child-like
idiot girl-woman like she can! (See her in Scorsese's remake
of "Cape Fear"!!) She completely delivers her role against
Pitt's characters redneck neanderthal to a tee!
Add to this, David Duchovny's detach cool and charm,
and his characters kind of privileged, laid-back, idealistic
vibe as a writer who is obsessed with serial killers,
who wants to travel cross-country to the locations of some
of the most gruesome murders in recent history with his
photgrapher girlfriend, played with icy aloof arrogance
by Kathy Larson, who isn't keen on the idea of picking up
these scruffy strangers to share costs for their "adventure".
Oh, and what an adventure it turns out to be!--
WOW!!--I love this film! (-:
Even though Brad Pitt was just 2 yrs in from his breakthrough
role as the roadside hottie in "Thelma & Louise",
and everybody was touting him as the young beefcake version of
Redford or Newman, he was keen to show the world that he was
indeed an actor of great depth & versatility and not just
another pretty face!---Well, he defintely shows his stuff
in this early work! Dominic Sena's direction works with
eerie dark precision here, and he and Pitt forge what would
turn out to be a career-long bond here!
As savage, warped and wicked as Early Grace is,
with Brad Pitt playing him, he is still perversely sexy
as hell at the same time! (-:
Brad drops trow a couple of times in this and shows
off his dirty & sweaty but chiseled physique!
Duchovny shows off his sexy too in a steamy hotel love
scene with his girlfriend.
This film is still intriguing and can hold your attention
after almost 16 yrs!--WOW!!--Has it been that long?
This film is a keeper for your collection!--Buy It!
"How are you going to write a book about something you know nothing about?"
2009-07-06 - Kalifornia (1993 which is a road movie that turns into gripping, chilling disturbing, darkly funny thriller, focuses on four main characters. Two East Coast intellectuals, Brian, an aspiring writer who is researching the materials for the book on the famous American serial murderers (David Duchovny) and his girlfriend Carrie (Michelle Forbes), a photographer whose inspiration could've been the works of Robert Mapplethorpe, take a car trip from coat to coast to visit the famous murder sites. There is another young couple in the car with them, their complete opposites in any way imaginable, Early Grace, out on parole (Brad Pitt) and his girlfriend Adele with the mentality, outlook, mannerism, and one and only Alabama accent that Forrest Gump made so memorable. The dark irony is in the fact that while visiting the the sites famous for the gruesome and terryfing murders committed by infamous serial killers, Brain and Carrie don't realize that the man who shares their car is in reality a serial killer himself.
While watching it I kept thinking what took me so long to see it and how could I miss it in the first place. Kalifornia, the first feature from Dominic Sena (and certainly the best he has made so far) is the film that overblown, overloaded and heavy Natural Born Killers wanted to be but never was. Both films explore the similar themes, and Juliet Lewis stars in both. Unlike Oliver Stone's movie, Kalifornia tells a lot about nature of mass murderers and the interest and fascination with the them but it never glorifies them. I saw it for the first time couple of days ago, and I could not take my eyes off the screen even though it was difficult to watch at times. I always knew that Brad Pitt was much more than sex symbol but I did not expect him to be THAT good playing a white -trash psychopath mass murderer with very short temper, perverse sense of humor, and undeniable charisma. That's how Brian describes Early, "The man who lived in the moment. He did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. I don't know if I was fascinated or frightened by him." Early Grace is one of the best performances by Brad Pitt which he gave in this often overlooked but brilliant movie in 1993. Juliet Lewis was also very believable as a childishly naive young woman in denial of the obvious vicious signs in her tough boyfriend to whom she had turned after tragedy in her teenage years.
Kalifornia 
2009-06-17 - Brad Pitt is a real low-life with mental problems headed for Kalifornia any way he can get there. Juliette Lewis as his love interest is a not-so-bright good girl/bad girl. Timid David Milford and determined Kathy Larson are the middle of the road couple with the car. This strange mixture does not bode well for the trip from the git-go.
