To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

From the 1975 play, "common" people spout philosophy and psychology in street slang. By attributing middle-class "hang-ups" like greed, paranoia and vanity to "losers," Mamet dramatizes "our" similarity to "them" (we all have our investment "bubbles") and vice versa. Luckily for the audience, this is done within the context of a deceptively simple (if we can piece it together from the fragmented conversations) crime story (touches of O. Henry) and some uniquely funny dialog and situations. Good acting, esp Nelson. In a recent interview, Arthur Miller had decried how difficult it had become to be a "serious" Broadway playwright. Apparently Mamet saw the "writing" on the wall and turned to screenplays, and has managed to appeal to a sufficiently wide audience. Many writers have been less successful at that transition, as satirized in "Barton Fink."

Chock Full o' remarkably well acted, meat and potatoes' dialog,American Buffalo renders shades of , "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," in a satirical Forum. As the two main characters are masterfully fleshed out by Franz and Hoffman. This dialog is so tight that I manage to arm My own verbal arsenal with, what I deem as, "Social Pet Phrase Ammunition", in a single viewing! To draw on a few key points, has me doubled over with side-splitting laughter! Please pardon my allusion, yet you must see it - To relate. Further more you can set your Wrist Watch to the remarkable timing, captured on screen, of this Rare Duo's, seemingly natural, performance. Don't get me wrong, in terms of there being an absence of opposing thematic content towards plot. The acting definitely saves the movie. Although, it's probably not for your average movie goer. It's become one of my top 20 "Dialog driven" classical winners!This is a fine example of, "You don't need a billion-dollar budget to make a quality Motion Picture".

When two low life dirtbags see an easy score they spent many worrisome hours figuring out how to run the game. So engrossed were they in their greed that they were unable to look at the score with any degree on intelligent planning. Hoffman's character was a particularly odious goof totally unable to consider anything but a speedy, easy job. Crazy film; thumbs up.

I remember driving through New Providence, New Jersey with my family in the fall of 1963 as a 16-year-old expatriate from the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. We were relocating to this community because the large corporation, which had employed him as a personnel manager and labor relations mediator for years, had transferred my father. On that day, riding in the backseat of our two-tone ghastly green, pre-Iacoca Dodge, I caught my first glimpse of the dark side of unrealized human potential. This jarring insight triggered a shifting of the youthful tectonic plates of my ‘Happy Days' Weltanschauung and has remained in my memory with a stark, persisting resonance for over 40 years. In fact, the benign hypocrisy I associate with this memory, probably laid the cornerstone of my assault on society's most sacred cows as a student later in the ‘60s. On the street corner, stood an older man of indeterminate age with raggedy clothing, needing a shave and being more toothless than not. He was waving a cane wrapped in shredded newspapers and grinning idiotically at all that passed. I recall vividly how incongruous and puzzling this scene was to my young mind. I asked my parents who is this man… what is he doing… why is he like that? They responded nervously and, I thought, rather inadequately. I don't remember how they explained it, but I was perceptive enough to know that: a) they didn't really know b) they didn't want to know and, more importantly, c) he represented something that repelled them and stirred their deepest insecurities as adults. Now, as an adult, I know about homelessness and alcoholism… about shattered dreams and failure. I understand the fears that all adults have about the interconnectedness of social, economic and emotional life and its fundamental frailty. We all hope to create meaning and security for ourselves. The old man was an irksome anthem to all the ‘crazy old uncles' in the attic, untethered to established melodies and outrageously adrift from convention… a poster boy for the well known adage, `There but for fortune go you or I.'‘American Buffalo' with Dustin Hoffman (Teach) and Dennis Franz (Don) are two guys in a junk shop planning a theft of a coin collection. The plot involves a rare ‘buffalo' nickel and plotting about a totally speculative coin collection that they plan to rob. Pathetically, this collection may not even exist. The heist never takes place. All that does happen is a descent slowly into a world of plans and paranoia, more plans, contentiousness and self-delusion brought to us by…you guessed it….the dark side; the side of handguns without permits, the side where transient hotels are euphemisms for ‘flop houses', and everybody seems to be aimlessly strolling toward that street corner in my childhood memories, each with their own cane & newspaper flag. In spite of all their pugnacious, animated posturing, it's just another glimpse of those same insecurities that challenge and motivate us all. It's why we all work so hard on ‘Maggie's Farm.' The dialogue is the ‘thing.' It is tangential and circuitous. It seems to lead nowhere. One senses that these are routine exchanges. The Franz character emits an occasional spark of redemptive compassion, but Hoffman plays a man consumed by the code of the ‘streets' and he harangues Franz for being so weak. This is a brave and challenging play put to the silver screen but I'm guessing that its dialogue-dense script would better engage on stage. However…bear this caveat in mind, afterall David Mamet wrote it. This film is a sad and stressful ‘black tie' film of the interior and requires a companion mood to suit the color. I was left feeling raw and hollowed out by the poverty and folly of human endeavor. The viewer should dress their affect accordingly.