Big City Blues

Big City Blues was a failed experiment of a film that would later be repeated successfully in films like Boogie Nights and Crash. It's the story of five characters, two hit men, two drag queens and a prostitute who meet up in a deserted Miami mansion one fateful night.

The drag queens Giancarlo Esposito and Arye Gross are the most interesting of the quintet. Especially Esposito who is in a journey of transitioning, but not quite sure if she wants to complete the change. The names in the cast are the hit men, Burt Reynolds and William Forsythe who do their best, but are defeated by a lousy script and poor direction. I can see Reynolds was cast here as he was in Boogie Nights, but in that film there was a cohesion as all the participants were involved in the pornography industry and were all interesting characters.

Georgina Cates is the prostitute and she's along for the ride, also defeated by poor direction. Her character as a hooker who aspires for something more could have been a lot better.

Crash is a film along the same lines and it was a Best Picture Oscar winner. Would this have turned out as well.

This film describes the experiences of a couple of hit men (one of them Burt Reynolds), a prostitute, and two drag queens over the interval of a few hours on one night in Miami. The convergent storylines eventually bring all the people together at one place and time. The movie was mildly entertaining, but the big problem was that everything happens at night and many scenes were literally under-exposed to the point that it was impossible to see what was happening. In a few scenes you can actually see where they tried to "stretch" the developing process to save the images. Somebody didn't know how to operate a movie camera. Amazing that this film was even released!

When I saw the cast of an interesting sound of title I thought it's gonna worth, but the film got a one Big-Blues –Problem ... a director. Usually when story is written and directed by one person, film is going to be good, but in this particular example, this law doesn't work. I mean this could be a good film, well but it wasn't ... Big City Blues got some funny scenes, good (as usually) acting by Giancarlo Esposito, and nothing more.

If you liked watching Mel Gibson in Million Dollar Hotel then you might enjoy watching Burt Reynolds in yet another film so bad it could never be distributed. I can only attest to the DVD version so maybe the VHS version is better quality wise but the movies night and dark scenes have been so poorly done that everythings seems red. I first thought my DVD players was messed up. It wasn't. If you insist on watching it I recommend you adjust the color on your TV until it is black and white. If you don't you will never be able to get through the film. If you do it will simply remind you of a poor film students attempt to revist the style of Pulp Fiction.

Big City Blues is young, hip & stylish! A very entertaining movie. If you liked Pulp Fiction, you will love Big City Blues! Clive Fleury is positively clever and definetly the next Quentin Tarantino! Brilliantly and artistically filmed - The movie shows us the hidden underworld of prostitutes, drag queens, and hit men and how all their lives come together in a very REAL way! I would tell you more about it but I don't want to spoil it for you, but the scene with the dancing human frogs was beyond visually stimulating...

A MUST SEE!