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Amazon.com Details: Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786303046952 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC ISBN: 6303046959 Label: Warner Home Video Manufacturer: Warner Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Warner Home Video Release Date: April 27, 1995 Running Time: 103 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: November 17, 1993 Sales Rank: 10617
Amazon.com: A refutation of then-President George Bush's notion of 1,000 points of light, this film by director Tim Hunter is about what happened when holes in the social safety net created a homeless population of unprecedented size during the Reagan-Bush years. The film focuses on two of the homeless: a sweet but troubled young man (Matt Dillon) and a more rugged, worldly-wise homeless Vietnam veteran (Danny Glover), who befriends him and tries to teach him how to survive on the streets. Dillon's character is schizophrenic, unable to get the medication or attention he needs to treat his problem. Instead, he winds up in a Manhattan men's shelter, a kind of Darwinian house of horrors haunted by streetwise predators (led by a scary Ving Rhames). Though overly sentimentalized at times, the film also serves as an indictment of a system that lets too many people like Dillon's character slip through the cracks. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Painful and Excruciating Reality
I won't deny that this is a difficult film to watch especially if, like me, you have lived in New York City for any length of time (I was born here). It's the story of a homeless man named Jerry (Danny Glover) who takes under his wing a schizophrenic but basically kind, gentle and loving young man named Matthew (Matt Dillon). Jerry helps Matthew adjust to homelessness amidst a bureaucratic system that sabotages the success of anyone trying to escape it. It isn't fully clear why Matthew's mother has abandoned him - though with Matthew's history of mental illness, you get a good idea (horribly cruel as it seems). Jerry not only calls Matthew his son but also names him Saint Matthew, the Saint of Fort Washington (because of his healing touch to those in pain). I think this is an important film for everyone to see at least once (even with the few holes in the story - like why Matthew's mother's neighbor doesn't call to ask if Matthew could stay in his mother's apartment while she is away or why Matthew and Jerry don't go back to their friends' place to stay after the friends leave - maybe those answers were left on the cutting room floor).
We live in a society that's absorbed with money, looks, extreme plastic surgery and so many other things that don't matter, that many people don't ever see the profound suffering around them each day. Not to mention all of the nameless, faceless people whose bodies are interred in the Potter's Field on Hart Island (near the Bronx). Interestingly, I learned after some research, that the term Potter's Field comes from the Gospel of Saint Matthew (27:3-8). After Judas had betrayed Jesus and hanged himself, the 30 pieces of silver he received could not be placed back into the treasury because it was blood money. Instead the first Potter's field was purchased with the silver. I believe the actual meaning of Potter's Field is "Field of Blood." Pretty powerful, no? Just remember, there are many Matthews out there slipping through the cracks all the time. Having volunteered with the homeless in New York, I can tell you firsthand how awful it is just listening to the stories of mostly good, decent people who, for any number of reasons, fell victim to a system that often fails the very people it is meant to help, including the mentally ill. Imagine having to live in these circumstances - often unspeakably violent and terrifying on a daily basis. When you consider that after a day of work (however difficult it may be), you can go home to your own quiet place (however small it may be), buy yourself a meal on the way (even ... Read More
Rating: - The truth about Fort Washington
This little known gem is a gourgeous film in many ways. First of all it's a rewarding buddy movie: the young schizofrenic Matthew (Matt Dillon) becomes homeless and it's obvious that he doesn't know the streets and their uncanny laws. But then he meets the elderly black Jerry (Danny Glover), a big wounded Vietnam veteran who takes Matthew under his fatherly wings. Together they wander the streets and try to get by by washing car windows at intersections. Being together (or rather: not alone) makes everything look a little brighter for Matthew, and in a way, for both of them.
The streets can be tough, but the real threat comes from the shelters: huge purgatory-like halls filledwith a thousand plus beds to accomodate as much homeless people during the cold nights. But it's more like a common prison, with the dangers of being harrased, robbed or killed by thugs lurking at every corner.
Main Bad Guy is Little Leroy (a real creepy Ving Rhames), who takes a special interest in Matthew, vowing that one day the young chap will get it for good.
But big Jerry manages to keep Matthew and himself out of danger for a long time. Meanwhile he and the youngster dream about putting a shop together and earn some real money and get a little apartment for the two. These fantasies keep them alive and kicking. They meet other friends, the Latino Rasario and his pregnant girlfriend and the aging Spits who complains about artritis in his hands. Matthew touches these sick hands and mysteriously the pain vanishes, making him the Saint of the movie title all of a sudden.
The question remains whether Matthew with his healing powers and Jerry with his street experience can survive long enough to get out the danger zone for good; there are hints that they truly can, and yet there are forbodings that terrible things will happen indeed.
The entire movie feels honest in every sense, the way the life of homeless people is displayed: they are realy hardworking people, trying to survive. They are people with lives and loves and plans for the future. They are people we can realy care for.
All is thanks to a wonderful cast with every actor in the right place, giving a top notch performance. Director Tim Hunter, who made the raw-edged but touching adolescent drama "River's edge", never goes for the obvious or the cheap, but instead gives us a warm hearted, powerful drama, with a stunning eye for details, a comic note at the right time, and with an ending that will leave no viewer unmoved.
This isn't just cinema at it's best, ... Read More
Rating: - no title
Very heartfelt and basically sad movie about homeless men in New York with Danny Glover and Matt Dillon. I had not seen Dillon in some time and I am once again impressed by his work. He is very, very good here. As several critics have written, and I agree, the movie is best on a straightforward level, without trying to put goodness, or threats, or couples in love, into its plot. The long shots of all the cots in Fort Washington, and the banks of lights going out, were chilling. But Glover's character was too good, even with one bout of perverseness thrown in. I thought more should have been done with Dillon's photography, perhaps. It's always so easy to have a character die in the end; it wraps things up. It's much harder to write a continuing life. I felt the same about "Backdraft". It's like the chicken way out. And how do you know which homeless person is truly deserving and which is not? Certainly Carl wasn't. He put himself there - nobody else. But what a waste of human beings.
Rating: - the sants of fort washington
the best movie in 1993, dillon and glover were being their parts in this movie, amazing.
Rating: - one of the best films of the 1990s
This movie got little notice when it was released, but it is an incredible achievement for the filmmaker and the actors. Those who love film should not miss this movie!
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