Product Description

An delusional man who thinks he is a cowboy becomes involved with a young girl whose father prohibits her to see him.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 24-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32778 in DVD
• Brand: THINKFILM LLC
• Released on: 2006-09-26
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 114 minutes

Features

• "Hypnotic andihaunting." -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone Harlan (Norton) is a charismatic cowboy stuck in suburban San Fernando Valley, who by a twist of fate, rides into the life of a rebellious young girl Tobe (Wood). Their chance encounter explodes into a passionate romance-despite evidence that a more sinister truth might be lurking beneath his country charm. Wanting to protect his teenage

Amazon.com
Down in the Valley falls short of the greatness it's striving for, but it's a fascinating film that's easily recommended. Serving as both star and co-producer, Edward Norton seized upon writer-director David Jacobsen's neo-western screenplay as an opportunity to play the kind of daring and challenging role that Hollywood rarely offers. Norton's considerable talent is fully engaged as he portrays Harlan Carruthers, a cowboy anachronism in California's San Fernando Valley, where his Stetson hat, old-fashioned manners, and wild-west romanticism provide an escape from his dreary life of dead-end jobs and fleabag motels. We can't tell if he's really a former ranch-hand from South Dakota or a delusional psychopath, and that turns Down in the Valley into a suburban variation of Taxi Driver, with the threat of danger increasing as Harlan is befriended by Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood), a bored teenager who seduces Harlan for the sake of romantic adventure. Tension and suspense escalate even further as Harlan tangles with Tobe's suspicious and belligerently protective father (David Morse) and lonely 13-year-old brother (Rory Culkin), but Jacobsen's intriguing film grows problematic when it veers into mythic western territory. Struggling for present-day resonance with themes of rugged individualism and frontier manhood in an era when those qualities are virtually extinct, Down in the Valley reaches a climax that feels forced and unconvincing, but fine performances (especially by Norton) and Jacobsen's bold, risk-taking direction make this a film worth seeing.--Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

"You can be anything you want to be,"
Imperfect and overlong, somewhat stretched and overwrought, Down in the Valley is still a beautifully acted and potent take on a dysfunctional working class family and a naïve drifter - bordering the edges of sociopathic derangement - who ends up powerfully affecting their lives.

Set firmly amongst the freeways, tract-homes and the urban landscape of the San Fernando Valley, Down in the Valley centers on the character of Harlen (Ed Norton), a type of suburban cowboy, who lives in a netherworld of cowboy fantasies and rambles the Valley tipping his dopey hat to the ladies and promising skeptics he will earn their trust.

Harlen lives in a shabby motel, and when bored, pretends he's in Western movie shootouts playing with his guns and lassoing the kitchen chairs. He's been working as a gas station attendant that is until he meets the equally unmoored Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood). Tobe is the defiant and languorously beautiful teenage daughter of a local jail sheriff (hunky David Morse) and Harlan courts her with a cool self-composure.

Of course, from our eyes - and from Tobe's father's - Harlen is nothing but a white trash loser, a dolt who's probably verging on the edge of sanity. But the lovely Tobe doesn't see him this way and she falls for his old-world and romantic cowboy ways when he's actually more innocent and psychologically even younger than Tobe.

Harlen is in reality a child, a man out of place "down in the valley," this land of fast-paced activity, modern rules and where people never get out of their cars. Yet he's also impetuous and manipulative and often acts on the spur of the moment without thinking of the consequences. The first serious signs of trouble come when Harlan takes Tobe to the country for a ride on a white horse that belongs to an eccentric rancher (Bruce Dern) he claims is a friend, and the "friend" pursues them with a gun.

Harlen also holds Tobe's kid brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) in his complicated thrall. Things get really out of hand when Harlen starts playing off Lonnie and Tobe's affections with their belligerent, protective father and supplying Lonnie with the simple love and attention the boy (and maybe Harlan himself) has never had.

Of course it's inevitable that the shielding father and the wayward boyfriend inevitably clash, and much of the tension of the movie comes from how this relationship eventually plays out. Down in the Valley begins like just another blue collar domestic drama, full of mis-communication and misbegotten tension, but then it radically veers off course, hurtling into the realms of myth and allegory.

Harlan always wanted to be a cowboy and in the final denouement he gets what he wants - but at a price. Then his problems become too overwhelming for Tobe, for Lonnie, for the law, for himself. The climax, a wildly symbolic cinematic chase through the little wilderness that's left, detours across a Western movie set, where all the gun violence begins to take it's toll.

Writer and director David Jacobson builds a rich setting for the inevitable dramatics, the action taking place in a land of American myth that's gone terribly wrong. Jacobson's characters are so richly drawn and his actors to phenomenal in their respective roles, that you can forgive the movie for becoming a little heavy handed and to some extent losing its way towards the end. Mike Leonard October 06.

A Hot October Rides Hard on Harlan
Nice, charming Harlan, played superbly by Ed Norton, a gas station attendant from out of town who's never been to the beach takes a ride from the nubile girl with 'gumption" according to her booding father, played by David Morse. But the beautiful and comely October is underage, and Papa doesn't like the older and somewhat weird Norton dating October, so he forbids their liasons. But Harlan doesn't take no for an answer, and when he can't find October, he settles for her little brother, taking the young boy on another stolen horse ride and teaching him how to shoot .45 revolvers.On their return, Daddy is waiting, and pulls a gun on Harlan, threatens he'll use it if Harlan ever darkens their door again. Harlan responds by breaking into the home, stealing October's Daddy's .45 and packing her a bag. But October won't leave. Tempers fly and October is shot. Harlan tells October's brother October was shot by their father, and that only Harlan can rescue the boy from being a ward of the state. Another horse is stolen, and Harlan and the boy are on the run from the cops and October's father through the hills above the San Fernando Valley. Shots are fired and people go down. But Harlan and the boy are still on the run, and October's wounded father is hot on their heels.

This movie charms and frightens the viewer. Harlan's progression into madness is slow and masked by his easy going nature, his simple humor and by his easy smile. But underneath, Harlan is seething, roiling in a world that doesn't fit him. A cowboy out of his element. A dead shot with a lightning quick draw. Harlan knows he's going to die, and he's determined to take some people with him.

Meanwhile, the children's father is finding ways to bridge the resentments which have split his family apart over time. Coping with adolesence can be tough for a hardened man pre-occupied with his corrections job and looking for love. Once disinterested and authoritative toward his children, the father discovers the depth of his love for his children, and learns new ways to communicate it. adversity can bring people together.

This is an excellent movie, but one which will keep you guessing. Both Ed Norton and David Morse perform their roles as if they were born to them. I found this movie very enjoyable.

3.5 stars -- recommended to viewers who can stay with it
Edward Norton plays an evil drifter in "Down In the Valley", a low-budget flick he made between big budget movies in 2005. He meets and woos 16-year-old Evan Rachel Wood, daughter of his foil, David Morse, and brother to Rory Culkin, whom Norton also turns toward him with his easygoing, hayseed charm.

What is most recommendable in this film is Norton's outstanding caricature of a South Dakotan using his enigmatic charms to entrance Los Angelite Wood and her brother against the wishes of their lawman dad, Morse. Bruce Dern has a small role as someone trying to unmask Norton's evil character.

As always, Norton is riveting in the understatement with which he carries out his role. You want to accept his explanation that he's a misunderstood well-meaning guy against Morse's admonition that "I've seen your type before." Morse plays the good guy opposite the evil star, although he really isn't that much of a good guy. Abusive with both kids, Morse plays a lawman that uses his position to dissaude Norton from sticking around his daughter. This precedes a somewhat predicatable scene where the film both unravels and begins, finally!, to get interesting.

I say finally! because this movie is about as slow as maple syrup in February for 75 minutes. It crawls around with little forward motion in a sequence of scenes that define the characters and build the apocalypse that occurs after 75 minutes, when the movie seems to take off.

Still, this is required viewing for fans of any of the principal actors, all of whom are well-cast and carry out their roles well. Morse played another good guy foil to a bad guy star in the outstanidng 2001 movie, "The Indian Runner". If you like this movie, buy, rent or borrow the other one. It's like this one only twice as good.