Kiefer Sutherland Movie:

		List Price: $14.98		Label: Lions Gate Salesrank: 29667 Released: October 15, 2002
		Our Price: $4.13
		Used Price: $1.93
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Beat Reviews:
Awesome
2008-10-27 - This is a great movie for anyone with interest in the Beat Generation.
Although the Movie lacks exact Historical facts, it does well enough in its own interpretation. BEAT is a Moving Movie that deserves to be watched more than once. It will satisfy most people that take a liking to the Beats' Books and their History.....an excellent twist to the actual events enacted.

Ridiculous
2008-09-08 - Ask yourself- if there were a film about a bunch of no talent losers who do stupid thing, but without any humor, would I want to watch it? If you say no, good for you. For that is the sum of what the film beat is about. The losers are Beatnik charlatans William Burroughs (Kiefer Sutherland), his wife Joan Vollmer (Courtney Love), and their pals Allen Ginsberg (Ron Livingston) and Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus). Ok, Ginsberg at least had talent, but anyone with a brain knows he pissed it away. This is a really bad film, and its poverty starts with aimless direction by Gary Walkow, and a script that is utterly devoid of energy, spark, and wit.

The film is basically about the idiotic relationship between bisexual Bill and juiced up Joan, and how he comes to kill her in a drunken game of William Tell with a loaded gun in Mexico City in the 1950s. The film starts with a brief prologue telling us how aspiring newspaper beat writer Lucien Carr's relationships with the others. Their lives are disturbed when one of their friends is killed by Carr and Burroughs leaves New York for Mexico, with Joan. A few years later, Carr and Ginsberg visit Mexico City, where they find out Bill left his Joan and their kids in Guatemala with a gay lover who not so secretly loathes Bill, but pleases him for the money. Carr claims to love Joan, and offers to take her away from all this- or things to that effect. So, he, she, and Ginsberg hightail it, by car, to a volcano destroyed village. Yet, Joan stupidly decides to stay with Bill, who is angry over his gay lover's treatment of him. It's been a while since I saw the film, and I do not care to rewatch it to give its ending away. So, let me just cover my tail by saying you won't be blown away by the ending. Oh wait, it ends with Joan getting shot, and Carr, back in his New York office, weeping.
Oddly, I was weeping, too, at the end of this film, but not for the death of Joan Vollmer, but for the death of the time it took me to watch this crap, as well the commentary which, likewise, left no real impression with me. There are precious few extras, and even were the DVD chock with them they would probably blow, as does almost everything put out by anyone even remotely connected to the Beatniks. That is because they were by and large void of talent and creativity, anomic, childish, immature, irresponsible, and plain old repugnant people who lacked ideas, compassion, sympathy, empathy, and warmth. Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah, and the acting sucks too. Love should stick to vamping off her dead husband's legacy, Livingston apparently had no clue as to Ginsberg's speech patterns and mannerisms, and the worst of all was Kiefer Sutherland, whose revulsion in a scene where he has to kiss and get `physical' with another guy is something that has to be seen to be believed. It's that bad. Perhaps the only two good things I can say for the film and the DVD is that the film a) ends and b) shows just how dull, and all the other qualities I described above, these people were. I was actually glad when Bill killed Joan. I wanted to do it myself.
In short, don't waste your time nor money.

Visually appealing.
2007-03-01 - This film was much better than expected, great performances and a visual treat, wonderful light and color, and you can almost smell the lush, tropical foiliage of Mexico and Guatemala. I loved Courtney Love. She never had a bad scene and was gorgeous throughout, like a young Anna Magnani. It was fine seeing Kiefer in something so different than "24", and Ron Livingston played a very tight and appealing Allen Ginsberg. There is much to enjoy here. It is a fascinating glimpse into the time period and the lives of these turbulent souls. Take a trip to Mexico City and visit with the Burroughs. It'll make all your headaches disappear.

Reedus 5 out of 5 again.
2007-01-14 - As usual, Reedus delivers better acting than most in the movie, yet he forgoes due credit lack of a bigger name. Definitely an intriguing movie. Sutherland does a good job as always. Courtney Love is slightly distracting.

I'd reccommend this if you're interested in the subject, or would like to see more of the phenomenal Norman Reedus. I've yet to see him perform poorly in any movie, regardless of the audience or the budget of the film.

"Behind every great man, there's a. . .
2006-08-14 - a bitch from hell yappin' at his heels, who, chances are, started out as a reasonably nice girl before he messed her up for good. In this case, literally.

A brilliant, at times magnificent, script, with the ever controversial, awesomely gifted Courtney Love, as footloose and fancy free in her part as, let's say Diane Keaton was as Annie Hall, and as cast to type. Keifer Sutherland does capture the cadence of Burroughs' voice, but more importantly, his darkness.

A child of the sixties, I grew up honoring the beats, and kept a place in my heart for them. At 14, Brando's famed saw from The Wild One, "You don't go anywhere, man, you just go" became my credo. A couple of years hence, an obese, aging Alan Ginsburg would give me a long, passionate, horny look over, late one night in a New York restaurant, dispelling what I had begun to discover, in my callow and ignorant way, were some rather vague and hastily established illusions, propping up the fragile domain of self-deceits in which I lingered too long.

The beats were great - and their greatest impulse, perhaps, the turn to Zen, although the jury's still out on that one too - but there was darkness there, and many kids, such as myself, fixated on that darkness, and were devoured by it. Homosexuality and heroin are not Gods - but that they became for the beats, and their camp followers in the Warhol wing of a generation, and generations to follow. This movie exposes that darkness at its source, eloquently, precisely, and in homage to Burroughs in the skein of his dark, unyeilding, ultimately selfish, genius, without stint.