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List Price: $14.96 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 30034
Released: February 24, 2004 |
| Our Price: $4.95 |
| Used Price: $3.17 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A boy, struggling to pass the entrance exam to his late father's alma mater and virtually ignored by his mother and two sisters, asks Justin Mcleod, a solitary ex-teacher with a tragic past, to tuter him. as thetwo apply themselves to the task at hand, they build a friendship with the power to heal the wounds of their past.
Description of The Man Without a Face:
Making this movie represented a rather risky venture for Mel Gibson--it was his first effort at directing, and the role demanded that he deliberately obscure his sexy matinee-idol looks. Gibson seems to truly relish his Lon Chaney Jr.-esque turn as Justin McLeod, a reclusive former teacher with half his face and body badly scarred, and a dark, secret past. The folks in McLeod's postcard-pretty Maine town have dubbed him "Hamburger Head" and exchange malicious gossip about him. But one boy is needy enough to dare to penetrate the fortress McLeod has built against the outside world. Fatherless Chuck Norstadt (Nick Stahl) is so anxious to escape his dysfunctional family that he pesters McLeod into becoming his mentor. Their relationship for the most part avoids the sort of sticky sentimentality one might expect from Hollywood. Chuck is a real, credible kid, a petulant pain with a chip on his shoulder, and McLeod is no Mr. Chips. It's fun, and quite moving, to watch these two cranky misfits battle their way toward a friendship that will change both their lives. Margaret Whitton (Major League) gives an unaffected performance as Chuck's narcissistic mother. "I'm just not cut out for this mothering racket," she tells her rudderless children, as she flits from man to man. Gibson's own personal code of honor, we suspect, is very much in evidence in this movie's message: One must take responsibility for what one wants in life. --Laura Mirsky
The Man Without a Face Reviews:
What a Great Movie! 
2009-05-18 - I saw this movie years ago, and watching it again was a real joy. It is one of Mel Gibson's best (he's not so overpowering as usual) but the real star of the movie is Nick Stahl. He was really a great actor even as a young boy. The movie is a tear-jerker, but is just a wonderful story. It makes you think about what is really important in life. The movie has beautiful scenery, too.
Fate is a curse for the bigots
2009-03-05 - That's a strange film indeed. The situation is not innocuous, far from it. It cannot be considered as being a simple emotional or sentimental film, not even a social film. The stake is a lot more than that. It is a cultural film, a film about a whole culture that is being stifled, destroyed just out of bigotry, the culture of the male maturation of boys. Not even the sexual bigotry that is actually brandished to justify the rejection, and that's why it is not social or sentimental or even emotional. It is as cold as cold can be and purely cultural. It is dealing with the fundamental freedom of any child, of any man, of any woman, to dominate their lives, to choose what they want to do, who they want to love and even the way they want to love them. And the stake in the film is not even that last element since there is absolutely not one single little iota of sexuality, not even understood innuendo, between the man wand the boy. The only sexuality is between two heterosexual teenagers who are not of age. But why is that man rejected, why is that boy oppressed into severing his friendship from that man? The reasons are as ugly as any bigotry can be. First the bigotry of both men and women against any man who is not married and the father of several children. When we know the strongest criticism comes from the sheriff - whose mission that over-protective and slandering attitude may be - and from the mother who has three children from three different fathers and is raising that boy in an all-female environment with the introduction of a fourth man, husband, or whatever, to soon bring in another child probably, at least a development that might be satisfying for the mother's impulses, maybe for the daughters' impulses too who are more or less their own bosses and authorities, but a development that can only be disruptive for the son who is in that fragile moment when he needs some stability, a male presence and certainly not a mother who is multiplying her sexual partners. This film is thus a denunciation of the society that enables a mother and a sheriff to frustrate a young male teenager of the only friendly male presence he has managed to develop himself. This frustrating attitude is castrating in many ways too. And what's more it is vain because no one can get a teenager to reject and forget that friendship of his and the man will be there when he graduates, even if at a certain distance. But why is that bigotry so violent and ruthless? Mel Gibson makes it a lot more effective by making it the result of his deformed and disfigured face that was burned severely in a car accident in which a child, who was not the man's, was killed and for which he had spent three years in prison for some kind of accidental manslaughter. The local public opinion transforms it into a sexual crime that cannot be in anyway excused, especially since it never was committed. This duplicity, this obsessive fear from these people is the sign that we are sick and mad in our own psyches, we, I mean, the normal dominant heterosexual and terroristic moralists.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID.
Nothing can take that grace away
2008-12-16 - I really enjoyed this film because it told the all important lesson that we all must learn: do not judge. Jesus said it, the catholic church teaches it, and western civilization would be a lot better if we all practiced it. When we all walk by people everyday we must never presume to know what they are going through. This movie had a profound impact on my life, and taught me that nothing is ever as it seems. It also shows all of us what we could learn if we open up to the right people and let them bless us.
Coming-of-age tale.
2008-08-12 - The Man Without a Face starring and directed by Mel Gibson is a superb drama with a little bit of comedy thrown in. Gibson's performance is so strong and intense, I couldn't take my eyes off of him. Nick Stahl is also excellent and I think this was his feature film debut if I am correct, glad he continues to act today. This film deals with an unlikely friendship in a narrow-minded town, I really enjoyed this film from beginning to end. I highly recommend it!!
Good lessons to be learned!!!
2008-07-25 - This is a really good movie and I think one of Mel's best. Although he appears disfigured in this movie, it is a great chance to really see him act. This movie is very well made and is thought provoking. It is not done in typical fashion either, meaning that the end is left wide open for you to draw your own conclusion as to the future of the characters.
The best lesson of this movie is - don't judge a book by it's cover, or even better still - don't judge.
