Sadly Over-hyped

One of my all time favorites.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I didn't know what to think when this movie ended. There's certainly no sense of closure for many of the principal characters, with plot threads left dangling and expected reconciliations left to the viewer's own imagination. But then I thought about the title, and how the various stories had an ethereal quality, allowing the viewer to drift in and out of them much in the way smoke will gradually dissipate when exposed to it's surrounding elements. I thought more would come of Auggie's (Harvey Keitel) daily photos on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue, though they did serve as a plot device to get Paul Benjamin to slow down and contemplate each picture as an ongoing narrative in the life of the city. For his part, four thousand straight days of taking those pictures would have amounted to eleven years of doing penance for stealing a blind old woman's camera, a self imposed sentence Auggie eventually found some comfort and solace in. The two main questions I have coming out of the picture would be what Ruby (Stockard Channing) really did with the five grand, and if Rashid/Thomas was able to reconcile with his Dad (Forest Whitaker). I have my own ideas and you probably will to. Which is why a movie experience like this can be somewhat refreshing when the film makers leave things up for you to decide instead of relying on their own perspective. Viewed on a different day in a different frame of mind I might have thoroughly dismissed the picture as a pretentious flight of fancy, but as things stand, I found myself empathizing with the characters and wishing them well.

Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel) owns a Brooklyn smoke shop where regulars hang out. He takes a photograph of his shop from the streets everyday at the same time. Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) is surprised to see his dead wife Ellen in one of the photos. She was pregnant when she was killed. Rashid (Harold Perrineau) saves Paul from on-coming traffic. In return, Paul lets Rashid stay with him and starts mentoring the young man. Rashid reconnects with his father Cyrus Cole (Forest Whitaker), who lost his arm and love in a car accident, without revealing their true relationship. Auggie's one-eyed ex Ruby McNutt (Stockard Channing) asks him for help with their pregnant daughter Felicity (Ashley Judd). Paul is assigned by the NY Times to write a Christmas story and Auggie gives him one.I love the idea of Auggie's photographs. There is something compelling and poetic about it. These characters are interesting. Some of the stories are more compelling than others. The cast led by Hurt and Keitel are doing solid work. These lives each have their own stories but I'm not sure that every plot finishes. It's like Auggie's photographs. Every one is unique and has a story to tell but it is the congregate where the true beauty is revealed.

From the Miramax logo that opens it, Smoke is very much of a piece with 90s faux-indy films in the vein of Pulp Fiction or Clerks. It shares a lot of traits with this wave of films: great actors, somewhat affected dialogue, a shaky portrayal of race and a distinct sense of machismo (although not nearly as nauseating as, say, Swingers). Where Smoke differs is in rejecting the violent nihilism that often haunted this decade. Instead, this is a story about communities forming and the minor miracle that is everyday survival.Smoke is ostensibly centred around an ordinary corner smoke shop in New York City. We follow the shop, and the people around it, over the course of a year. There's a really laudable desire here to tell the story of a social environment rather than an individualist narrative. This is a goal that the film never quite fulfills, meandering into some fairly standard family drama with a refreshing lack of narrative closure. Even when the scenario would suggest melodrama, the overall focus of the film is not on what happens to our protagonists but the bonds that form between them.The performances are as great as you would expect from reading the cast list, although Stockard Channing's character is too underwritten for her to really shine. The script is by novelist Paul Auster, eschewing most of his postmodern experimentation for street-level human drama. (There is still a novelist named Paul with a dead wife, so I guess some things never change). Auster's dialogue is usually authentic-sounding, save for the tendency to drift into stagey monologues that never really justify themselves.As a film, Smoke is something of a failure -- it's unable to create the sense of place it aims for without relying on hoary story lines and drama. But there's also a lot to like about the film, from the brilliant cast to the relaxed pace. It's not all it could be, but it still deserves a look.

If you like a real character movie, in which the movie is foremost all about its acting and characters, this movie is a great one to watch!It's a movie that follows multiple different story lines and characters, with each their own thing going on. They are not necessarily connected, other than through the Harvey Keitel character. And remember, this is a 1995 movie, so please don't expect an Alejandro González Iñárritu type of movie, with a frame narrative in it. It's from before that era, so it's not as slick and 'clever' with all of its different story lines and the way they are connect. It's a more slow and subtle done movie, that has a simple concept and takes a simple approach to it.And nothing wrong with that, since it does indeed work out well for the movie. It's great to see the different story lines and characters slowly progress throughout the movie and to see where it's all leading up to.It's about the little things in life really and doesn't attempt to make things bigger or more heavy than they needed to be. It does in a way let this movie feel as a feel good movie, though it's definitely still foremost done as a drama. It's a good thing that it keeps things light and humble, since this definitely improved the movie its entertainment and rewatchability value.As you would expect, the movie gets mostly carried by its actors. And it really has a fine cast in it, with people such as Harvey Keitel, William Hurt and Forest Whitaker all involved. It's always great to see fine actors act, so that alone already makes this movie worthwhile.It's definitely worth watching if this movie sounds like your kind of thing!8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/