Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Edmond

Edmond is an adaptation of a David Mamet play written for the screen by the great playwright himself. Like most Mamet works it contains harsh material and very distinct language, and like so many of his stage-to-screen adaptations, it seems like it may have worked better on the stage though it is still great fun to listen to the back-and-forth banter and the individual monologues. This film stars Mamet vet William H. Macy as a worn down middle-aged executive on the verge of a nervous breakdown who has just left his wife. After a foreboding encounter with a psychic and another with a strange man who gives him a business card and some cash, Macy descends into a hellish nightmare as he encounters prostitutes, pimps, con men, and worse. The material is disturbing to say the least, but like I said, the way that Mamet's words role off of his characters' tongues is like music to the ear.
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