Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more

 

The American Success Company (1979)

Director: William Richert

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Scripted by Richert (of Winter Kills fame) from a story by Larry Cohen, this black comedy is a delightfully offbeat satire both on capitalism and on macho posing. Bridges is excellent as the wimpy rich boy, disillusioned with wife and family business, who determines to change his life by taking on a completely new second identity as a cold, callous, misogynistic, semi-criminal type. Loosely structured and often verging on the farcical, it misses as often as it hits, but the performances are superb, and Richert manages to keep the excesses of the script nicely under control. Disarmingly unAmerican in tone and message, it was perhaps not surprisingly shot abroad in Germany.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.