Friday, January 4, 2013

BUFFALO ‘66 (1998)


An unusually funny and entertaining comic drama to watch without fail. The man in multitasking here is Vincent Gallo in his brilliant directorial debut who has not only written, directed and acted but also scored the original music by himself; quite an arrogant statement just like his character of Billy in the film or rather an achievement on independent spirit of filmmaking. Billy, a sleazy hot headed ex-con kidnaps a feisty dumb young girl as soon as gets out of prison and gets her to pretend as his loving wife for the visit of his parents’ home. Parents are wacked out too, unaware about Billy’s been away in jail.

Wonderful quirky humor runs through out the film in this low budget independent film and Gallo has achieved it through bizarre romance between two unlikely characters performed so damn well by Gallo and Christina Ricci. Along with them there’re eccentric performances by Billy’s parents too. His sports obsessed mom and his pervert Dad who takes advantage of her son’s pretended wife played so brilliantly by Ben Gazzara. Gallo also covers the film with fine visual style and images too including those intermittent short flashbacks pop up on screen. There are number of scenes that made me laugh out loudly whether its dinner table scene, auto photo session, bowling alley or demand for hot chocolate at Restaurant. The film becomes quite a serious towards the end but Gallo surprises me with a real happy ending towards the end.

Ratings- 8/10 

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