AMERICAN BUFFALO
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz, Sean Nelson. Screenplay: David Mamet. Director: Michael Corrente. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
"The dialogue." "Yeah?" "The dialogue." "What about the dialogue?" "Nothing, I'm just talking." "I know you're talking, but what the **** are you saying?"
Just this: because it is so easy to get caught up in David Mamet's distinctive brand of rat-a-tat, profanity-laden dialogue, it is even easier not to notice that he may be one of America's most deeply humanist playwrights. OLEANNA, for all its incendiary subject matter, had its foundations in a frustration over societal impediments to communication; GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS showed the business world hammering people into the ground. The twenty year old AMERICAN BUFFALO was one of Mamet's first plays, and it retains the ferocity of youth in its film incarnation, a set-bound but affecting study of trust and the lack thereof.
Dennis Franz plays Don Dubrow, the owner of a second-hand store and a man with an axe to grind. It seems that a customer in his shop bought a buffalo nickel for a price Don later learned was a steal, and the deal has left him burning. With the help of a neighborhood kid named Bobby (Sean Nelson), Don intends to steal the nickel back from the customer -- along with other rare coins -- and sell them to another collector. It is a simple enough plan, until Walter "Teach" Cole (Dustin Hoffman), one of Don's poker buddies, learns about it. Teach is not sure Bobby is up to the task; in fact, he's not convinced Bobby won't run off with the entire haul. Gradually, Teach persuades Don to let him in on the score, setting in motion a chain of events which will show just how much honor there can be among thieves.
It is a challenge to make a play work on the screen, particularly if the play is as dialogue-heavy as a David Mamet play, and director Michael Corrente (FEDERAL HILL) seems content to follow the lead of film versions of OLEANNA and GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS by refusing to "open up" the action. AMERICAN BUFFALO takes place almost entirely in one location -- Don's store -- and there are times when the production begins to feel very cramped and oppressive. That actually works in favor of Mamet's vision, however, as this one small shop becomes a microcosm for an urban America where suspicion has become the defining quality, inhabitants retreating into locked, gun-protected rooms because someone out there is ready to do them harm. It is a bleak tale filmed in bleak tones, but Corrente retains a necessary urgency.
He also has two sensational lead actors and one up-and-comer to play the key roles, and they make AMERICAN BUFFALO even more compelling. Corrente lured Hoffman into playing Teach by arguing that it was one of "three great male roles in American theater" (the others being A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE's Stanley Kowalski and another role Hoffman has played, Willy Loman of DEATH OF A SALESMAN), and while that may be arguable, Teach is a dynamic, pathetic fulcrum for Mamet's story. He is a small-timer so convinced that everyone is out to rob him of his small place in the world that he sees threats, offenses and conspiracies everywhere, and he acts as a carrier of paranoia, infecting those around him. Hoffman brings to the role the dissolute swagger of Ratso Rizzo, and while that makes the characterization familiar, it doesn't make it any less intriguing. Dennis Franz does superb under-stated work as Don, a man trying to believe that there are some things he can trust,, but the ease with which he is swayed by Teach betrays how similar the two men are. There is a slight weak link in Sean Nelson, who made an electrifying debut in 1994's FRESH but appears to have grown more self-conscious; he clearly never quite gets a handle on Mamet-speak. Still, when the three actors share the climactic final scene, they refuse to surrender your attention.
Mamet is very much an acquired taste, and the taste of BUFFALO will be unappetizing to many. As a film, AMERICAN BUFFALO is not spectacular, but it brings a great play to a wider audience, and that alone makes it noteworthy. Those who might find it too pessimistic should think of it instead as a plea for a society where we can trust again, as Mamet's raging attack on a world where civilization hangs by a thread and where friendship isn't worth a nickel.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 buffalo tales: 7.
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