Die Helden von Fort Washington

I saw this film about 5 years ago on TV and then spent the next 5 years trying to find out what it was called. This film is a true masterpiece it really is. The acting from the two stars is fantastic(Matt Dillon is always fantastic probably one of the most underrated actors along with Kevin Bacon). The direction is fantastic and the all round feel of the film is great, it draws you in and you really feel for the charactersand you really will them on, then it hits you hard at the end not giving you a hollywood happy ending. Hollywood always seems to tiptoe around films like this and unfortunately a mass audience never gets to see them, mainly because some d**k h**d reviewer calls them a sentimental tear jerker. The film is a real gem and if you're reading this you probably agree.Get the word out to the people no-one should miss this classic.

As a former NYPD officer I can tell you this film is so realistic it's scary. the terrifying homeless shelters of NY are one step above Dante's Inferno. Potters field on Hart's island is also portrayed exactly as it is.

This Matt Dillon is some kind of actor. How do actors like this get passed over while morons like Sandler and Stiller are so highly praised? This world is just a little upside down. I have a feeling we wont be seeing many more movies like the saint of fort washington now that shrek 2 has busted all previous box office records. Like I said this world is just a little upside down! Danny Glover is also great in his role. So sad that we can spend 200 billion in Iraq and not provide proper facilities for our own mentally disturbed people.

A film about homelessness seemed like a depressing movie to watch, but the New York Times blurb on the video case along with Danny Glover's presence tipped the balance. It wasn't depressing. I was glad to see it. My wife rated it 10 out of 10. I'd give it 8 out of 10. Many scenes are heart-touching, without being over-sentimental. The acting and script are super, making it very believable. This isn't the usual 'shoot-em-up / car chase' movie. It is a story about life, about the reality for so many. You do not have to be homeless, or even close to it, in order to relate to this movie. All of us have had similar experiences of despair and bad luck. And just who is the saint ? Watch and find out...

You and I can usually put the homeless out of our minds. It is said that if you truly felt the misery of the homeless, you would go mad. I could not watch this movie all the way through at one sitting, but had to take it in increments. You know tragedy will occur, as though the wasted lives of the hundreds of vagabonds, mentally ill and veterans on the street isn't itself a crime.

As someone who sometimes serves the homeless at the Arlington Street Church in Boston, I know these people. They act like the software engineers I work with 'so long as they are on their 'meds''. That we are so savage a society that we no longer take upon ourselves the obligation to do good to the helpless, to house them as we did in a more civilized time, that's just one of the many signs of our downfall as a society.

No preaching in this movie, however. Danny Glover's and Matt Dillon's eyes tell it all. I think one reason we have so many humanitarian actors is because they have to play the roles of the downtrodden and in doing so, become empathetic with them. Since many writers, musicians, actors were blacklisted or attacked for their heroic stands, they know the hurt of the mob or bullying police themselves.

Dillon and Glover went out on the streets and lived among these denizens of the sewers, these reminders that we have regressed to Dickens' time. The complicity of the Shelter police in the beating and murder is something that will make you retch, as the sharks of the night rob the other homeless of their pennies, armed with knives that somehow get through the metal detectors. You have no reason NOT to believe the various anecdotes that emerge, from the retarded couple and their pregnancy to the old man with the arthritic fingers, sharing his soup to the Vietnam vet with shrapnel still in his knees, screaming in pain when his drugs give out. The sharing of the homeless with the others in the same state is something that few of us in the 'burbs will ever do,

You keep thinking something beatific will happen as the boy has visions of a happy life in glorious Technicolor, but the drab colors of the mean streets of New York remind you that it's all in his head. YOu will never pass up another street hustler with his roses on Mass Ave., trying for a few bucks to ease whatever horrors brought him to this place in life. YOu will want to open wide your home to every vagrant in the Pine Street Inn.. Yet fear will stop you: fear that some will be as the murderous hustlers of the night in those shelters. You understand why some of those you serve dinner to won't be caught dead in a shelter, for fear they WILL be.

The city of New York aided in filming this important movie, which should be shown to every HIstory class, every Sociology class and to every recruit thinking he will return to Glory when his time in Iraq is over. They're already joining the Vietnam vets in homelessness, as this movie shows.

The most horrible scene is the movie however, shown so poignantly and understatedly by Dillon, is when he tries to return home after his slum apartment is razed. His mother has moved to Florida, and left the key with a neighbor who refuses to let him in his 'family home' in the Bronx. You have no understanding for how a mother can desert her mentally ill child......the joke is made painfully real. "My folks left while I was out and left no forwarding address." For the first time in my long life, I visit a Potter's Field and am told "There is no funeral." They are buried in a mass grave, each in a wooden box. Even as we are shown the box, the photos left as a memorial blow away, leaving no trace of that human being's individuality, his genius. Having met many intelligent, well-educated homeless whose shell is too brittle to bear the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', I wonder how we in this country dare call ourselves 'civilized'. Yet I remember the admonishment in my training in Clearwater, when i volunteered to help out at a church's homeless shelter: "Don't ever think you can change them, can make their lives right again. You can only serve them where they are." This movie makes even more clear why the homeless man snapped at me, as I whistled while cleaning up the mats in the morning: "What are you so happy about?" Maybe he knew what I didn't: I was whistling because I wasn't him. Great movie, but for God's sake, don't ignore what you take from it. Dillon and Glover punch up the point: There but for the grace of God go I. No wonder this movie wasn't 'popular'. It points the finger right at you and me, for the injustice we do to these, the helpless.

just watched this again, and again found it moving, real, touching, sad, funny, and so many more of the emotions that make up real life; in this case, the lives of 2 homeless men. Danny Glover is perfect, as usual, and Matt Diillon *is* his character;now realize what an excellent actor he is.Couldn't stop watching, even though I knew it had no fairy tale ending. After you see this- and don't miss it- you will never again see a homeless person without seeing him/her as a *person* , not just a faceless ""problem".