Product Description

John LeTour (Willem Dafoe) is a good man in a bad business, working for Ann (Susan Sarandon) on the wrong side of the law. When Ann decides to close up shop, LeTour has to go straight and discover his own future. But time is running out on him as he must dodge the cops, confront a killer, and find his heart before he can leave his past behind. Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90211 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-12-29
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com
This compelling 1992 drama is often cited as the third film in writer-director Paul Schrader's trilogy of "nocturnal alienation" that includes Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (which Schrader wrote) and American Gigolo. Like those other films, this one deals with a solitary man who works almost exclusively at night, and the film immerses us in the rhythms and psychology of his lifestyle. In this case, Willem Dafoe plays a cocaine addict who has kicked the habit that almost killed him, but still delivers drugs to clients for a dealer (Susan Sarandon) who dreams of opening a legitimate cosmetics business. He meets an old lover (Dana Delany) who fears he will draw her into their old life of drug abuse, but that proves to be the least of their worries. Simultaneously sad, funny, and fascinating, the film inevitably leads to the outburst of violence that has become a kind of signature in Schrader's work. It lacks the visceral impact of Taxi Driver, but few directors can match Schrader's gift for creating fully realized characters on the fringes of a society to which they don't quite belong. Insomnia, in Schrader's world, is a condition suffered by those whose dreams remain elusive, just beyond their grasp. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
John LeTour (Willem Dafoe), the main character of Paul Schrader's dreamlike but tough-minded new film, is a forty-year-old New York drug courier who knows he has to change his life, yet doesn't quite know how. "You drift from day to day," he writes in his journal, and for most of the picture that's all we see him do. He glides through the night streets in the back of a limo, carrying small amounts of cocaine to upper-middle-class customers and then carrying their money back to his employer, a chic dealer named Ann (Susan Sarandon), who pays him a modest salary. It's an unexciting, shockingly routine existence. The movie is anything but routine. This is an absorbing, superbly confident piece of filmmaking, and the acting-by Dafoe, Sarandon, David Clennon, Victor Garber, Mary Beth Hurt, and a radiant newcomer named Jane Adams-is sensational. (Only Dana Delany, in the pivotal role of LeTour's ex-girlfriend, in uninteresting.) Schrader's theme is the role of chance (sometimes called fate, or fortune, or providence, or plain luck) in contemporary life, and for most of the picture his writing and direction daringly embody the idea of unpredictability. Every scene is built around some sort of surprise: a disorienting visual twist; a reversal of narrative expectations; an unanticipated reaction by one of the characters. Up to the final minutes, when Schrader borrows one motif too many from his earlier "American Gigolo," the picture keeps the audience as well as the hero in a constant state of uncertainty: we don't know what we'll see when we turn the corner. We drift pleasurably, borne by the film's mordant wit and its rigorous, unfakable honesty. (The score, by Michael Been, consists of songs that comment directly on the action; if the music were better the device might be less annoying.) -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Humane
Unusual in the usual world of American movie theater. Thought provoking and very consequential, certainly not unpredictable but somehow enriching and very humane. The characters of drug dealers turn out to be very likeable and egzistential.
There are many weaknesses in this plot - violent end seems to be repeating "Taxi Driver" in a sort of casual "Crime And Punishment" way, nevertheless it is very simplistic. Drug dealer is apparently more in a character of Paul Schreader than a realistic immersion into the psyche of a drug dealer. The main character narates too much as if we have a problem to understand his actions, unnecessary in my view. And there is a genuine bad guy as if to create the vent for the eventual explosion at the end. He is reduced to inhumanity perhaps to underline the humanity of others that some of us would have trouble accepting. All in all few weak places and yet because these types of intelligent movies are so rare, it is so much beyond the typical Holywood entertainment sewer. All the actors are doing great work as expected.

Perennial
I can watch this film at the drop of a hat and not mind that I've seen it a million times. It's not my favourite film, and I have more than a few criticisms of it, but overall, it's one that I'm glad I own.

The acting is fine--Susan Sarandon and Willem Dafoe always are--and Dany Delany does a credible job, but the real star is the screenplay, which was written by the director Paul Schrader. It's endlessly quotable, realistic, funny, and at times thought-provoking.

The soundtrack is marred by having the same no-name singer (who's trying so desperately to ape Bryan Ferry) all throughout--and I thought Vonda Sheppard was lousy--but the incidental music is nice.

Completely overlooked, and well worth the rental.

Willem Dafoe: Major Romantic & Erotic Dream Figure
Writer-director Paul Schrader delivers his most satisfying film for me. He is even better known for his work when he solely screenwriters, such as for his unsurpassed "Taxi Driver," directed by his frequent collaborator, Marty Scorsese. For his own solo film though, this is my favorite. Schrader's film work is frequently compared to the late Robert Bresson's films. However, Bresson has always been a little too painterly for me. Schrader is painterly enough and to make it any more so evokes that dreaded word in film: slow. I frankly prefer this film to the Bresson films I've seen, which makes me a film heretic I realize. Urban alienation is at the core of this film, which is true of all Schrader's work, and Willem Dafoe plays a nocturnal drug dealer who doesn't get much sleep (hence the title), probably because his dreams remain so elusive from his grasp, as a metaphor for the overall film. Two women present the immediate conflict in the film. Susan Sarandon plays a drug dealer who Dafoe works for and she tells him that they both need to get out of dealing. She plans to open a legitimate cosmetics business and seems capable of following through on the idea. She is the most in control of her life of the three main characters. Dana Delany plays Dafoe's former lover, who doesn't want anything to do with him because they were substance abusers together in the past. Although he's clean now, he still deals. But is her character as squeaky clean as she now proclaims to be? Dafoe needs to figure that out. Further tension comes about from the eroticism between Dafoe and Delany plus the growing potential for eroticism between Dafoe and Sarandon. Dafoe is absolutely wonderful in this film and becomes a major romantic and erotic dream figure for the viewer regardless of what the viewer thinks of him vis a vis the two women.