9/10/96
MOVIE REVIEW: American Buffalo
A tight, riveting 'American Buffalo'

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

*** (out of five)
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz, Sean Nelson. A Samuel Goldwyn Co. release written by David Mamet from his play, directed by Michael Corrente. Rated R, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 87 minutes.

MICHAEL CORRENTE'S screen version of David Mamet's American Buffalo is one of those rare products in which actors, director and a taut script meet to make extraordinary and powerful entertainment.

When its brief 87 minutes (and that includes a couple of minutes of credits at the end) were over, I only wished that there had been more.

You may have heard that Mamet's saga, filmed in Pawtucket, was set in a junk shop where three desperate people plan a heist of valuable rare coins, including the American buffalo nickel of the title. The three-character script is fueled by the conflict between business and friendship, loyalty and the need to make a buck.

Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz both give towering performances as their characters test that loyalty in their hungry pursuit of greed; young Sean Nelson paces them beautifully and subtly.

But, for his film, Corrente has created a fourth and equally dynamic character-: the City of Pawtucket.

Although the city in which the story is set remains unnamed on screen (Mamet was writing about Chicago), the square-block area anchored by the boarded-up Leroy Theater and surrounded by sad little storefronts and grim alleys shot under gray skies is a dreary landscape that mirrors the melancholy and hopelessness its human characters feel as they plod through their wasted lives, hoping that their guile and wits will pull them through for one big score . . . or at least for one more day.

Hoffman's Teach, a loser who lives in a cluttered room in a flea-bag hotel, is an edgy man who's dangerous because he thinks he's smart. With his long, greasy hair and unshaven puss, Teach is Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo 27 years after Midnight Cowboy - more sullen, cockier, quicker to strike out unexpectedly in anger. He's nearing the end of his rope, and he knows it.

Franz's Don, the owner of the second-hand shop where most of the action takes place, realizes that the hair-trigger Teach is a liability. At first he doesn't want any part of him in the heist of those valuable coins from a visiting collector. Don wants to give the action to Bobby (Nelson), his protege, who idolizes the older man for his advice and for the fact that Don treats him with respect.

But Teach, an expert at sniffing out a moneymaking scam, accidentally hears about the caper and suddenly wants in on it. He plants seeds of doubt about young Bobby's ability to pull off something so complex. And yet clearly he has no idea about how to do it himself.

In one of American Buffalo's many surprisingly funny moments, Teach and Don go on and on about what might happen if the collector keeps his coins in a safe, and just where, if anyplace, he'd keep the combination to that safe . . . should the safe actually exist. The sequence is staged by Corrente and played by Hoffman and Franz with the dexterity of a well-honed Abbott and Costello skit in which Teach and Don try to figure out who's on first.

Despite Don's distrust of Teach's abilities, Teach also manages to poison Don against Fletcher, the never-seen partner in their poker nights at the back of Don's store. Don wants to cut him in on the action, for stability. But stability is not to be for these sometime friends whose loyalty is tested mightily.

Compelling characters
American Buffalo is a simmering pressure cooker in which Don and Teach bicker and pirouette around each other's schemes, a microcosm of life, where greed sometimes takes precedence over trust.

Franz is terrific as Don, brimming over with nervous energy while he hatches his plot; looking with cold-eyed calculation to discover the best man to execute it; slowly melting into despair as he realizes that his plans are getting away from him and threatening to unravel in the light of Teach's phony bravado.

Teach comes alive as he thinks of the big money he's sure he's finally going to get his hands on. Hoffman makes him a man on the edge, excitedly grasping at what he sees as his last chance, fretting that he may lose it.

He sees himself as the no-problems guy, ready to kick down the collector's door if he can't get in any other way. He's cocky, trying to convince everyone else that he's sure of himself, even as we see him for what he is, a sad and pathetic little man whose only hope of getting ahead is stealing from someone else, upping the ante with violence if he must. It's a galloping, mesmerizing performance, as Hoffman seesaws back and forth across the emotions.

Nelson, the catalyst to the lightning strike that's brewing throughout the film, is a subtle counterpoint to Hoffman and Franz. And yet his direct and simple approach to Bobby serves the character perfectly. We believe in his need for praise from Don, whom he worships, yet we must question whether he has learned too well and is holding out on the older men. This uncertainty gives the film its tension.

Language with a rhythm
Mamet wrote the script based on his play. When the play was first performed, it shocked theatergoers with its liberal use of four-letter words. I'm not sure if he toned it down for the screen or whether profanity is so often heard in movies now that it doesn't register as much.

Whichever, Mamet has a sense of the rhythm of language - the rat-a-tat- tat of candence that keeps American Buffalo percolating and that Corrente hasn't lost in his snappy direction. And if at times the script is a bit too poetic and intellectual for this stumblebum, Runyonesque crowd (at one point Teach actually says, "I am coming in here to efface myself"), more often than not the intensity of the mood pulls one into the story.

Corrente - using lots of tight shots and quick cuts - keeps American Buffalo lean and spare and gutsy. It's quite a ride.