Smoke

Smoke

It sucks when you have to analyse it for school, btw paul dies at the end

My biggest regret is that I didn't walk out. Horrible dialogue, constant overacting, a pace that is meant to be thoughtful but is, in fact, coma-like. I find it absolutely stunning that a sequel was made.

Not sure why this film received good reviews. The writing is amateurish, like that if a college freshman English major. Few of the characters have a unique, real voice. Almost everyone speaks like they have an Ivy-league education, despite the fact that everyone but the writer is poorly educated. A Brooklyn cigar-shop owner who quotes Shakespeare? A poor black inner city teenager from a broken family who speaks like a preppie fresh from vacation in the Hamptons? Totally unbelievable to the point it is impossible to think of these characters as anything but cardboard cutouts. The plot twists seem contrived, and are blandly predictable. This film comes off as fake and pretentious. Even talented acting can't save a terrible script.

I saw this movie with two friends. We all are intelligent moviegoers, not action-movie fans, or blockbuster addicts. I kept thinking, " Oh God, this is AWFUL", but thought maybe they might be enjoying it. It turns out none of us was enjoying it. It was the most boring piece of pretentious garbage I have ever sat through in a movie theatre. There was no plot, to speak of, just a series of 'episodes", and it seemed like most of the inane dialogue was improvised. The worst "detail" was Forest Whitaker's fake hook, which was about 12 inches longer than his "good" arm. What a joke !! This looked like some NYU film student's senior project. I would have given him a D-.

This is a film easily overlooked and perhaps lost in the anuels of time. Hurt and Kietel are terrific. The storyline is compelling, heartwarming and brutal at the same time. Facing eatchithers past our principal characters must summon the courage to face thier individual demons. This is a film I return to regularly. It's simply excellent work and the script is masterfully rendered. This is a film that is a must watch if you haven't seen it, and comfy yet reliably tense story of friendship and love upon repeated visits.

A string of clichés so pretentiously delivered that I was fooled when I first saw it in high school. Watching it again ten years later I am rather shocked that I could ever have enjoyed it, and that so many fine actors could have been fooled as well. Strip them away and you are left with a sentimental TV special for bored housewives, and on those terms I suppose it could be enjoyed as a pleasant waste of time. Still, it makes mediocre indie slice-of-life movies like "Twenty Bucks" or "Clerks" seem like masterpieces, and is not even in the same universe as the films of Jarmusch or Altman (I would particularly recommend Jarmusch's Night on Earth to people who think they love Smoke).

A truly amazing roller-coaster and would recommend spending the time to watch (don't let the first 2 or three episodes put you off)

I saw this movie in the Star Movies channel only in Jan 2008, a good 13 years after it was made. It is a perfect work of art - something you will never forget - and its memory will always gladden your heart. Ordinary people, ordinary lives - just like the most of us... its a piece of our life- and it will be taken at the flood along with us... William Hurt, despite his Oscar, has always been an underrated actor. And Harvey Keitel, Forrest Whitaker. Whats great about Hollywood is its wealth of actors all through the last century till date - one cannot help loving them all. I would rate SMOKE high among the 25 best Hollywood movies I have ever seen.