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Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9780780605800 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC ISBN: 0780605802 Label: New Line Home Video Manufacturer: New Line Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: New Line Home Video Release Date: September 01, 1998 Running Time: 124 minutes Sales Rank: 22812 Studio: New Line Home Video Theatrical Release Date: April 10, 1992
Amazon.com essential video: A wicked satirical fable about corporate backstabbing--and actual murder--in the movie business, The Player benefits from director Robert Altman's long and bitter experience working within, and without, the Hollywood studio system. Rising young executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is tormented by threats from an anonymous writer. The pressure and paranoia build until Griffin loses control one night and semi-accidentally kills screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio), who may or may not be the source of the threats. From that point, Griffin's life and career begin to fall apart. In keeping with the ironic spirit of the film itself, Altman's scathingly funny attack on the moral bankruptcy of Hollywood was embraced by many of the same people it was intended to savage, and restored the director to commercial and critical favor. Michael Tolkin adapted the screenplay from his own novel, and the movie is studded with cameos by famous faces, many of whom appear as themselves. The digital video disc includes a commentary track with Altman and Tolkin, some deleted scenes, a documentary about Altman, and a key to help identify more than 50 of the picture's big-name cameos. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Gaping and yawning on the deserted sound stage
A parody of Hollywood, once more, Gosh. Nothing new will ever be done on that subject. It is a rattlesnake nest and nothing else. Only the details may change but the wider and the finer pictures are always the same. This particular film what's more is showing that everyone hates everyone and that everything is crooked and that all the every's you may think of are all berserk and warped. So what! What's the point? Is there a point? A no star film that ends up with stars. A bad ending that becomes good , they say happy, I know. An author who sells his skin for a million dollars. An exec that sells ... Read More
Rating: - A smart satire that hits its mark and wins my respect...
I know that I really need to see more Altman. I had only seen (up until this weekend) `Gosford Park' and `A Prairie Home Companion', neither of which really impressed me (I liked `Gosford Park'; didn't love it, and `A Prairie Home Companion' was just a mess) but I hear all these great things about him and so I keep telling myself that I need to just load up my Netflix queue with his work and have at it. Anyways, Saturday night I happened to catch `The Player' on IFC while I was up walking my daughter to sleep and since I do happen to enjoy Tim Robbins (magnificent actor) I decided to give it a ... Read More
Rating: - Clever but shallow satire on Hollywood's dark side...
I'm not a Robert Altman fan but THE PLAYER ranks among the best of his crop of overpraised films. At least the performances are first rate without all the overlapping dialog that one had to endure in GOSFORD PARK, but the satire is laid on pretty thick even after the brutal accidental murder scene.
TIM ROBBINS plays a Hollywood producer who is unable to shake off the persistence of an aspiring writer without resorting to killing him in a moment of desperation and anger. He gets control of himself thereafter and is able to play innocent, especially after a line-up of suspects including ... Read More
Rating: - Altman taking on Hollywood
Robert Altman, director known for his artistic sensibility is taking on old-fashioned Hollywood, where the success of the films is defined by the happy endings and household name actors featured in them. This story features successful Hollywood executive whose job it is to listed to writer's pitches, hoping for the next big movie hit. He has it all, place in the fancy restaurant, pretty girlfriend and crowds of screenwriters in his office hoping to sell his studio their screenplays. He is also threatened by the newcomer in the business that may as well force him out of job. As that is not enough, ... Read More
Rating: - The Player
No one has an eye for human behavior like Altman, and this caustic satire of back-stabbing power brokers and anxious movers and shakers in La-La Land really soars, thanks to a brilliant script by Michael Tolkin, adapted from his own novel. Robbins is creepily understated as a put-upon exec, the drifting center of a sprawling cast that includes Greta Scacchi as a painter and Buck Henry, Dean Stockwell, Fred Ward, and Peter Gallagher, all incarnating various types of preening, unctuous "players" in Hollywood. Watch for cameos by A-list celebrities too numerous to mention--and too much fun to give away.
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