Product Description

Synopsis: Contractor, Nowak, gathers a group of workmen so they can provide cheap labor for a government official. Nowak has to manage the project and the men as they encounter the temptations of the West and loneliness from separation from their families. When military takeover occurs, he is faced with a much more difficult situation than he expected

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61632 in DVD
• Brand: PEACE ARCH HOME ENTERTAINMENT
• Released on: 2005-08-02
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Full length, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.com
Jeremy Irons gives a sleek, subtle, and gripping performance in the little-known gem Moonlighting (no relation to the popular TV series). Nowak (Irons) leads a small team of Polish building contractors, hired by a wealthy Pole to illegally refurbish his London home. They slip into England under false pretenses and squat in the house as they work on it--but shortly after they arrive, the military take over Poland and declare martial law (this real event happened in December of 1981). Only Nowak speaks English, so only he knows this has happened; fearing that if the others find out, they'll stop working, he decides not to tell them. As he starts stealing and scamming to stretch their rapidly vanishing money, Nowak grows increasingly paranoid and mentally fragile. Moonlighting is a political allegory and a psychological portrait, but thanks to Irons' sympathetic performance, the movie is also rivetingly suspenseful. Every time Nowak shoplifts, the tension--all the more intense for being such an ordinary circumstance--will make your skin crawl. Written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski (who co-wrote the screenplay for Roman Polanski's debut film Knife in the Water), Moonlighting is a deceptively simple and potent film that deserves a wider audience. --Bret Fetzer

About the Actor
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Eugene Lipinski

Customer Reviews

Great film deserves better treatment
This is a bare-bones DVD release of one of the best films by the Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski. Unlike his compatriots Andrzei Wadja and Roman Polanski (both of whom he collaborated with), Skolimowski did not become as famous, though he made a number of films of great distinction in a nomadic international career. MOONLIGHTING is one of his best movies, and this study of immigrant Polish workers in London remains a prescient political allegory, so it's unfortunate that there are not more extensive supplements to help explain the film's background and to discuss the many levels of meaning in the film.

Moonlighting
I didn't think that Jeremy Irons could pull off portraying a Polish worker but he does an excellent job. Irons is a foreman who along with several other Poles travel to London for work. While there, all sorts of turmoil develop back home to which Irons purposely does not relay any of the news back to his fellow countrymen. This is a great historical period piece as we hear and learn about the changes in Polish society but we actually see it in action, albeit on a very small scale, among Irons and his workers. In fact, the situation back home and the small world in which these Polish migrants find themselves in tend to parallel each other.