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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 66040
Released: September 16, 2003 |
| Our Price: $3.50 |
| Used Price: $3.76 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer wrote and directed this charmingly cracked nightmare comedy (Los Angeles Times) based on his best-selling 1984 novel. Set during the lonely emptiness of off-season Cape Cod, Tough Guys don't Dance features outstanding performances from Ryan O Neal and Isabella Rossellini. When wannabe writer Tim Madden (O Neal) wakes up from a memory-erasing drinking binge with an atomic hangover, he learns that it'll take more than a day to recover'since there is blood in his car and a severed head in his basement! Now, with a corrupt chief of police watching his every move, Tim must piece together the hazy events of the night before to solve a murder he mayor may nothave committed!
Description of Tough Guys Don't Dance:
Tough guys don't dance--and tough authors can't direct. Or at least that was the case with Norman Mailer and this mid-1980s potboiler. An overheated murder mystery obviously written for the money, the book became Mailer's return to moviemaking (after his quixotic efforts in the mid 1960s). This one, which stars Ryan O'Neal, is about a writer whose excessive drinking means he can't remember if he committed a murder and so must talk to everyone he knows to find out. Unfortunately, even with a cast that includes Isabella Rossellini, Lawrence Tierney, and Clarence Williams III, all of that talk doesn't make for an interesting movie. --Marshall Fine
Tough Guys Don't Dance Reviews:
Oh God, Oh Man, Oh God, Oh Man 
2009-07-18 - Oh God, Oh Man, Oh God, Oh Man, Oh God...
If you can find this movie, watch it simply for the laughs and don't expect to get anything else from it. Might I add that the source material for this movie, Norman Mailer's novel of the same name, isn't a whole lot better. I don't even think it's in print anymore.
May we inter this farce to the ground. In God's name we pray, amen.
Norman Mailer, Director?
2009-05-01 - Back in the 80s, Norman Mailer turned his novel "Tough Guys Don't Dance" into a screenplay that he went on to direct. It's a entertaining mess of a film with over the top lines coming one after the other while the bodies pile up. While generally a competent director when Mailer made a mistake, it turned into a disaster. The worst scene, as Mailer admitted in a 30 minute interview included as a special feature, is clearly when Ryan O'Neal stands on the beach yelling "Oh God, oh man" over and over again. To be blunt, O'Neal is not very good here and Isabella Roselleni is barely in the film. The supporting cast, from Wings Hauser to the always excellent Lawrence Tierney, make the film watchable.
While the plot moves along quick enough despite a lack of sympathetic characters, the film is also helped by a good score and some lush landscape and setting. Mailer, for all his faults as a director, used Cape Cod to his advantage in shooting the film.
The special features include the interview with Mailer which explains how the film came together and his experience with the cast and as a director. Mailer clearly had a soft spot in his heart for the film and admitted that while the film contained flaws, he was responsible for them. The other special features include a look at Provincetown and a funny preview where Mailer reads critical reviews insulting the film.
A great film? No. But entertaining enough and if you can buy it cheap then take a gander on it. And be prepared to laugh your head off at the dialogue.
Perhaps They Shouldn't Direct Either
2009-04-12 - Written and directed by Norman Mailer, Tough Guys Don't Dance is based on his 1984 novel of the same name. It is a tale of intrigue and murder on Cape Cod. It shows everything that is right and wrong about the man and his works. The dark humor is often very funny, and the script shows flashes of brilliance. Yet, it also is mindlessly hung-up sexually - bizarrely homophobic - and between those flashes it often sounds like a bad soap opera. The characters are drawn with mixed success. The nouveau-riche trash Patty Lareine is on target (I've met her first cousin), yet the Southern WASP patrician Wardley Meeks III is a wild miss, not because of the acting but because of the writing. The movie is worth seeing, yet it could have - should have - been better.
A VERY MAILER MOVIE (AS IN GREAT, EMBELLISHED WITH SPEEDBUMPS) 
2007-11-14 - When classmates in the 60's were reading Salinger I started reading Mailer. And haven't stopped. Until he died last week. Happily I've read and collected all but a few of his titles. I enjoyed his film translation of TGDD because I'd read and enjoyed/learned from the book.Now I guess it's re-reading time.
This film is as Mailer as the book. With a strong, character-driven plot drawn with the brilliance and pomposity Mailer's famous for. Personally,
I like his departure from expected forms, taking risks which might prove embarrassing. Flowing or stumbling, the flow of TGDD is still audaciously Mailer-brilliant. Funny on purpose or an egotistic misstep, artistically insightful or hung-over-off, it's still is way up with acknowledged smartest, entertaining flicks.
TGDD is an learning experience as well as an entertainment, in terms of the human experience as well as film writing and directing. Somehow, the characters seem exactly as I saw them when reading.
For a double hit, try reading the book before or after viewing the movie - I've come to like reading after viewing, for the imagery. It will make an impression, and an impressive one.
Great Movie
2007-09-02 - Norman Mailer's genius shines through with every scene. Very entertaining and plenty of black humour.
