Brilliant and touching

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw this movie on release ages ago and it's not hard to fall in love with it at first.Stephen Dorff's performance is really amazing. You never think for a moment he isn't Cliff Spab, with all the pent-up rage, pain, hostility and hilarity that it entails.For the first half of the movie, it's really "the Cliff Spab/Stephen Dorff Show." He goes on a sort of Jack Kerouac road trip, bumping heads and rubbing noses with a variety of characters (and some wonderful actors who play them): Jake Busey (a good movie for once), Joey Lauren Adams (always terrific and smokin' hot here), and Pamela Gidley (quite a complex little cameo).But after his odyssey ends, there doesn't seem to be much of a place to go...the film just stalls. I think the intent was for it to be completely character driven, so I wasn't expecting, well, a story-line or anything, but still.... I was hoping for more of a connection between the final scene, Spab's revelations, and the rest of the movie leading up to that point, but it didn't happen.Never read the book, but it sounds like that ending would have made more sense. A movie this dark doesn't deserve a happy ending....a little too tidy, in my opinion. But SFW?

This is a good movie and very representative of 1994. The soundtrack is a slice of the music of the time with Soundgardem, L7, Hole and others and its deep cynical undercurrent is straight out of the Kurt Cobain handbook.Stephen Dorff and Reese Witherspoon are both young and as good as I've seen them in any movie, though Dorff has the majority of the screen time, and does a perfectly solid job as a cynical, disaffected youth disgusted with his instant fame derived in a hostage crisis. There is a LOT of profanity in this movie re the title So F***in What. I wasn't crazy about Doirff in Blade, but he does a riveting job in this film, pulling off a crass, cynical character who is a natural class clown, but wants to be deeper and is.Again, I find it interesting that a movie that has a bunch of uncomfortable commentary about America and its ruthless media and weapons-saturated culture gets panned on these media boards. This is not an effects movie, and you may not find it 'exciting' enough if your thing is CGI, but its a totally competent and ambitious indie/starter film (I don't know where in the directors career this movie came out).This is the kind of movie a historian would go for, it was made by someone with ideas in the context of their time, and not some overwrought, over-positioned Hollywood puff piece. The movie gets a lot clearer at the end, revealing details of events you wonder about from the beginning. This film also has a lot to say about the horror of gun violence and being witness to it. People who attack SFW have an agenda. This is a great film.

I watched this film not knowing what to expect; what I got was one of the coolest, most original films I've seen. It is ostensibly a hostage-drama set in a Fun-Stop convenience store, but rapidly reveals itself as more; a biting attack on the media circus and the hype machine, a revealing portrayal of suburban life in America, and a comment on the nature of heroes. The leads are played effortlessly by Stephen Dorff (who seems to not be acting at all)and Reece Witherspoon, with excellent support from B-movie stalwarts Joey Lauren Adams and Jack Noseworthy. All the characters are unlike those you see in most films... they are the sort of people you've met, but never expected to see on screen. Characters the hero Spab (Dorff) meets along the way are delightfully unattractive and random, from the hippie Earl and his militant partner to the receptionist in a neck brace at a posh hotel. Richard Portnow's FBI agent has some wonderfully quotable lines, and Mr and Mrs Spab soon reveal themselves to be far from the perfect parents. The arrangement of the story (flashbacks are employed heavily) lets you build up a rounded picture of the events that made Spab a hero, not revealing the true account of what happened in the store until near the end. Up to this point the events are clouded by the media and gossip surrounding the "Fun-Stop Hostage Crisis" and although we are led to believe Spab did something spectacular, the later flashbacks reveal why he is unwilling to assume the mantle of hero and why he seems to be in a bad mood most of the time!. A great film that depicts a classic anti-hero with more than adequate back-up from the script and cast. Watch it soon!.

While S.F.W could have been so much better than it actually is, Jefery Levy deserves praise for successfully highlighting the fickleness and parasitic nature of celebrity. The film has an uneven feel to it, often seeming like scenes are randomly cut and pasted together, but it does communicate its message effectively. I felt the film would have been better if the first half had dealt with the hostage situation and the second with Spab's elevation to generation spokesperson. The constant shifting from the here and now to a small segue of Spab acting up to the terrorist camera doesn't seem to work very well. Stephen Dorff is quite good as the slacker cum hero, however the rest of the cast are fairly marginalised and have little to do. It might have been better if we had seen more of Spab's best friend Joe and saw more of their relationship, then the tragic events would have had more impact. I believe this plot point fell a little by the wayside amid the beer drinking and cursing that was slightly overdone. S.F.W does make you wonder how our society has become so vacuous that we bestow fame and adoration on ordinary people, stars of fake, idiotic reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor. In this respect the film was indeed ahead of its time. S.F.W is not a great film, but it is not a bad one and is worth a look if you're bored of teen comedies.