Reviews (10)

Opinion
I love William Petersen, in anything he does, but he's played in some really crappy movies, & he's so good, this is OK, Liked where he was downing the straight shots, of boos very realistic- he's so incredible to look at that you kinda of forget how lousy the movie is. Diane Lane is as always good & beautiful, the chemistry between her & WP was pretty good, lucky girl, to be in bed with him. I liked the last line he spoke in his jail cell, very profound & prolific. Have never seen before or since the other guy, don't have much of an opinion of him!!!

A whole lot more interesting than it seems
The other reviews for this film notwithstanding, this is NOT the "Gun Shy" that stars Neeson and Platt. This particular film stars William Peterson ("Manhunter")as Jake Bridges, and Michael Wincott ("The Crow")as Frankie McGregor, in what appears to be a fairly cut-and-dried exercise. Jake, a down-and-out writer is befriended by Frankie, a collector for a local mob boss. Jake needs money and something to occupy his mind so he won't drink himself to death. Frankie wants an education.

The two of them not only click,they become very good friends, and Peterson falls in love with his friend's girlfriend Melissa, (Diane Lane "The Cotton Club")setting up your basic triangle. The rest of the film is about how this whole thing plays out between them.

What makes it really interesting, though is the strong, homoerotic thread that winds through the film. By the end, you have to wonder why Melissa is even in the film (Butch assurance, perhaps) since the guys are so emotionally entwined they have made huge sacrifices for each other. (Don't want to give too much away here, so you'll have to see it for the particulars.) Even in the details, this thread seems obvious, at least to me.

But hey, don't take my word for it. If you don't see it, that's fine too. The film can be enjoyed on a number of levels. It's not a great film by any stretch, but the acting alone puts it way up on the list. All three principals turn in wonderful, nuanced performances, making this film well worth seeing. Give it a shot.

William Petersen
An OK movie, William Petersen carries it. He's an incredible actor, as we all know and too die for handsome & sexy- loved where he was throwing back the straght shots of boos- very realistic- kinda of a weird ending- Diane Lane & him had OK chemistry-don't know the other actor, never have seen , or heard of him before or since- just glad I can see WP on CSI- wished he'd make a killer Oscar winning movie

William Petersen
Bought this because , I am a huge William Petersen fan, he's great as a kinda of has been writer, who gets back on track, because of meeting the other guy, who I've never heard of?? Diane Lane is as always beautiful, love when he throws back the straight shots of boos, so realistic!! he is as always soo good, & soo handsome & sexy, whatever he's in is better because of him- the movie really isn't that good, but the ending is interesting, the last line, he spoke I liked.

Only watch for Michael Wincott's intense performance
There is only one reason to rent or buy this highly derivative, would-be noir, low-budget indie flick ' Michael Wincott's skillful, moving performance in what is apparently his only full-length, feature role after years of doing small supporting parts mostly as psychotic serial killers. Here he is very moving in a complex role as a soft-hearted Mafia wiseguy with a penchant for saving people. It is a neat idea that takes your initial stereotyped reaction to his harsh appearance and deep, gravely voice -- that he is going to be yet another crazy killer -- and spins it in the other direction. By the end of the movie, it's his character (Frankie) you are concerned about....not the "hero". While the film is otherwise pretty forgettable, I couldn't get his performance out of my mind after seeing it this summer. Prior to this, I had never heard of this very talented actor before.

Unfortunately, GUNSHY is otherwise badly flawed, suffering from a genuinely awful script by Larry Gross loaded fillled absolute howlers, corny situations and references to better films (especially GROSSE POINT BLANK, DONNIE BRASCO, GET SHORTY, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, MONA LISA, just to mention a few) that just make this look very lame in comparison...plus the absurdness of a crime gang that has exactly four members, one of whom is in a wheelchair, and who hail from that crime mecca of IRELAND. The terrible problem of IRISH gangland crime in Atlantic City?

The other leads are just unbelievably bad in this. They are otherwise respected performers, so I am not sure if the bad script or bad direction threw them off or what. William L. Petersen in particular is actually embarrassing. He is very badly miscast as Jake Bridges, a down-and-out journalist, who just like the character in 'Leaving Las Vegas' has gone to a gambling mecca to 'drink himself to death.' Petersen's performance is full of annoying mannerisms -- it is really agonizing to watch the hammy expression on his face as he chokes down drinks (demon alchohol, I guess). Combined with his heartless betrayal of his only friend Frankie, this makes Jake unsympathetic, and as he is the protagonist AND narrator that throws the whole dramatic structure of the film off-kilter. Beautiful Diane Lane (Melissa) is so affectless and flat that she is barely engaged with the story at all and is handicapped by a dreadfully fake "dees-dem-does Jersey" accent. (Needless to say, when either of them has a scene with Wincott, they are simply blown off the screen by his intensity and professionalism.) She has zero sexual chemistry with either actor, and she is particularly unbelievable as a nurse -- who wears spike heels to work with her nurse's whites! -- and who doesn't seem to know better than to leave a man (severely beaten and in shock) passed out unconscious on her living room sofa. The script suffers from Mr. Gross's concept that nursing is a 'loser' profession for uneducated gun molls, a very odd idea indeed, as an R.N. would normally have a college degree and earn a very good income.

Additionally, I have a hard time believing that Mr. Gross ever did more than visit Atlantic City -- this film doesn't have the gritty realism of a story set in a very particular time and place. It could have been set most anywhere and indeed was filmed mostly on soundstages in L.A. (so why not set it there? Or right...the whole 'Leaving Las Vegas' drunk thing). Except for a nice aerial shot of the Jersey shoreline in the titles, we see nothing of the casinos, or beaches or anything that would particularly center this story in its location.

Some other reviewers have commented on a homoerotic thread running through the story. This isn't really supported by the performances, but it certainly leads to some very odd lines in the movie. Jake mentions to Melissa that 'both men and women find him very attractive' -- not the sort of thing one usually says to a girl you are trying to pick up. But the most egregious example is in a shooting range, where gangster Frankie is teaching writer Jake how to use a handgun for the first time, and as they take turns firing their weapons, Jake tells Frankie, 'Now I know what I was afraid of...it feels so good.' Uh...OK. Phallic reference. I get it. But nothing is developed along this plotline, there is no erotic chemistry between the actors, and it's just a pointless and embarrassing red herring.

The two worst moments in this movie are when Petersen abruptly and pointlessly bursts into the sea chanty "What do you do with a drunken sailor?" and sings THE WHOLE THING while waiting for the other gangsters to complete a bank robbery. This is crawl-under-your-seat embarassing.

The other one is near the end, when we see Petersen in jail -- a country club prison for white collar criminals, no doubt, as he has a private cell with his own desk and typewriter. In a cutaway, we see a bookstore piled with copies of his book, "Deception in Atlantic City: A true crime story", which has won the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism (according to the window sign). The mockup of the book is unbelievably lame -- it looks like a kid created it on a home computer -- but the worst part is that the PULITIZER PRIZE-WINNING BOOK obviously must be the story of GUNSHY (i.e., how Jake got in with a "gang" as a mole, but then double crossed the police and went to jail to save his gangster buddy). So scriptwriter Larry Gross is basically saying that the plot of GUNSHY is so wonderful, so original, and such an expose of organized crime & police corruption, that it deserves the most prestigious prize in the world for journalism!!!! hahahaha....NOT.

At the time this film was made (1998), all three actors were pretty much minor leaguers despite long resumes. Today (2003) Petersen has the lead in the No.1 TV series CSI, and Diane Lane is a major film star with an Academy Award nomination for Unfaithful and new film Under the Tuscan Sun...while Michael Wincott is still basically doing cameos as psycho killers. If this isn't total injustice, than I don't know what is. Anyways, rent this video for his performance and fast forward through the bad parts. ... Read more

Amazon.com

An idyllic suburban life has never been portrayed to more queasy effect than in Marc Forster's Everything Put Together. Angie (Radha Mitchell, High Art) seems to have it all--a loving husband, a close circle of friends, a baby on the way. But when her newborn dies of SIDS, the isolated grief that quickly intervenes presents an alarming portrait of modern-day tribal outcasting as the American dream gets turned inside-out to reveal a cruel undertow. Treated as though she might taint their own families with bad luck, Angie's girlfriends abandon Angie to her grief and increasingly unstable behavior. Forster (Monster's Ball) shuttles artfully between the intimate handheld camera commotion of communal activities--neighborly barbecues, shopping excursions, rap sessions among friends--and the motionless scenes of Angie's unhinged state when alone, to create an atmosphere of suburban suffocation matched only by Todd Haynes's Safe. Everything Put Together was shot entirely on digital video, and its innovative direction and excellent cast subvert the familiarity of the home video to chilling effect. --Fionn Meade ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Everything Put Together is watchable independent film
I really enjoyed this movie, once I got used to the artful cinematography. The direction and filming are beautiful and I can't say enough good about the actors. They improvised many of their scenes and had to shoot the whole film in about 15 days, often "borrowing" a location and running away because of low funds...what a great movie to have come out of such a crazy situation. The actors manage to convey the emotionalism and the psychology of their characters without going over the top or seeming cliched and cheesey. A well done film all around. Now, for some general commentary regarding other reviews I've read:
A lot of people seem to be confused about the point, but if you listen to the commentary with Mark Forster, Rhada Mitchell, and Megan Mullally they talk about what it's all about. Everything Put Together isn't exactly the horror movie its been described as, but if you let yourself get involved it gets a little scary watching Rhada's character decsend deeper and deeper into her psychoses. One of the big things I'd like to point out is that her friends aren't bad people, they're scared. They've never been in this situation before and it hits a little to close to home for each of them, what if it had been her? They just don't know how to handle it, but that means leaving the main character with no support system to go through a roller coaster ride of darkness and inner deamons turning into light in the end. I like this movie, and obviously I'm buying it so that I can watch it repeatedly.

It has a point all right
If you think this movie has no point, you're not thinking hard enough. Monster's Ball used and abused Halle Berry to say something nice about white people--she was a heroine without a soul, another "Magic Negro" whose main purpose, finally, was to suggest something good about the white person on center stage. How dismayingly familiar. If you're a white person (like me) who liked Monster's Ball (unlike me), you should think about just why you liked it. (You probably liked Driving Miss Daisy, Ghost, The Green Mile, and countless other interracial greeting cards for similar reasons--think about it.)

This movie, though, is much more honest in its efforts to out some objectionable features of white, upper middle class-ness. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against white people, nor against white yuppies, as people. But despite what such people like to think, there are certain tendencies induced by being members of those two categories (and, of course, by being members of others). This movie is out to examine some of those tendencies, and it exposes them for the anti-communal, soul-crushing dangers they are. White yuppies can certainly avoid enacting such tendencies; however, when they're more or less surrounded by other white yuppies, and the only working class people of color they encounter are those who work for them (as depicted subtly in this film), well, it's difficult not to become excessively self-interested. The central character here--a mother who is shunned by her "friends" after a tragedy they should instead help her recover from--is portrayed as a victim of such tendencies, and the movie does so in order to expose them as dangerous.

This movie succeeds at this level of subtle social critique, but I'm giving it four stars because of its unfortunate reliance on cliched borrowings from too many horror movies, and for how long it spends demonstrating the effects of this tragedy on the unfortunate young mother. Still, it boldly goes where few filmmakers dare to go, challenging the shiny happy surfaces of upper-middle-class whiteness so unthinkingly projected nearly everywhere else.

I beg to differ
I loved Monster's Ball, Forster's other film, and i rented this becasue it was done by him, but this movie is not touching, harrowing, ot really anything. it is boring! I was about to throw up with the crazy camera work in the beginning, then it settled down, and i was going to throw up becasue of the acting, dialogue, etc. This story goes nowhere. Ok, it has some nice moments. But it doesn't really have a point. it tries to be something that it isn't. there is not enough "meat" here. I would not recomment this film to anyone. What was the point?

Considering Death
Everything Put Together is a harrowing look at what can happen in life when death shockingly intrudes where it seems not to belong. For the protagonist of this daring, deeply disturbing film it is the loss of a just-born infant that triggers the cataclysm. Having given birth successfully, Angie (who has had a joyful, medically uneventful pregnancy) soon learns from her hospital bed that her child has succumbed. She is torn in half. As the days elapse, providing some temporal distance from the event itself, Angie finds she has no way of coping with the terror her experience arouses or the longing for what was to have been. Her social network reacts to the horror of their friend's fate by distancing themselves quickly. Angie is suddenly unacceptable in her outsized grief and for having suffered an undeserved trauma that is frightening to comtemplate.Their lives are constructed upon the necessary premise that life in general proceeds at an orderly pace. Rips in the fabric of a person's sanity caused by unbearable events, especially when acknowledged by the victim in an unapologetic way, are too threatening to be tolerated. What they imply about our collective vulnerability and precarious sense of security is simply unacceptable in ordinary social discourse. Thus becoming a pariah adds to the intensely persecutory ambiance Angie gradually finds herself subsisting in. Marc Forster depicts this slide into exile and inchoate madness masterfully. But it is not until the point when Angie insists on seeing the post-autopsy corpse of her deceased infant that she begins to unravel precipitously. Up until then she has managed to hold herself together despite the onslaught of inexplicable loss and unappeasable mourning. It takes the actuality of what is impossible staring her directly in the face to break her. To his great credit, Forster has the courage and resolve to follow this unrelenting confrontation with death right down to every detail of its relentless claim. Everything Put Together captures the abyss of death absolutely brilliantly. It provides an emotional journey and catharsis for the viewer that is unforgettable.

A most unfortunate look at society today.
This film moved me like no other. Having witnessed first hand friends of mine who have lost children to IDs (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), I could appreciate the sentiments and experiences of the characters in this film.

The cruelty of "friends" and the idea that the mother AND father who lost her child were now somehow "unfit" to be near, or have their [former] social circle's children near, was heartbreaking, and only too true in our so-called "modern" society, where everything must be "just fine" in order to avoid being shunned or rejected.

What is this curse that afflicts our white middle class, especially "educated white middle class" females? Why would this young couple be further punished, after experiencing one of the worst kinds of pain, that of losing a child? Why does our society have no rituals of comforting those who are bereaved, other than a church service and an "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that..." as if talking about it and, more importantly, EXPRESSING GRIEF OUTWARDLY is taboo.

Is death and grief so unacceptable in today's world that those that have contact with it, or inadvertently experience it, must be punished further? Is no comfort to be offered, outside of "paying a therapist," "taking medication" or going to yet another group, this time a "grieving group?"

Is it still "Blame the Mother" for anything and everything that goes "wrong?" Does nature, or "the Creator," never have the right or the obligation to end a life for it's own reasons or purposes, or perhaps because something in a child did not develop right? Are we never to accept the natural events of life or of God or of anything that we "don't like" or "don't expect" or "didn't plan for this to happen?"

Who can you sue when a child dies? Whose "fault" is it? Why is it so impossible to accept death in today's society, and why do we punish the mothers who are touched by it, and grieve the most in it?

Are we all "supposed" to be living a "Martha Stewart kind of life?" Does Death have no meaning or purpose in this world?

The actors were all cast perfectly and their dialogue was so natural and "on the mark," it felt like they were in my own living room. I had wondered how far this "idyllic" pregnant mother's group would last, and to my horror and surprise, it didn't last past the birth of the first child in the group, to the most innocent of the group.

The cruelty displayed by all the couples towards the couple (both mother and father) who had lost their child was horrendous, heartbreaking and all too true, even in "this modern day and age." What will anthropologists have to say about us when they study our American culture as practiced by educated, middle class white men and women who are my own age?

The fact that this poor mother ultimately was forced to lie about being pregnant again to finally "gain acceptance" once again was truly heartbreaking, and a comment on how far "friendship" truly goes, in our "average white middle class America."

The director, Marc Forster; the writers Catherine Lloyd Burns (who also played "Judith" in the film) and Adam Forgash (writer and producer of the film), and all the actors are to be commended for their complete and accurate portrayal of our modern experience and reaction to "death" or anything that "goes wrong," for that matter.

The "witch" of the women's group (the "leader of the pack") is particularly to be commended at giving such a perfect portrayal as the ringleader, who leads the charge in ostracizing the most beautiful and innocent member, through her own jealousy and greed. She doesn't even like her own children, but is so "proud" to be "breeding" again. Is she nothing but an ever-present and ever-active brood mare? Do any of these women have an ounce of compassion in their hearts? What do they consider "friendship" to be? Did "witch trials" ever end?

Marc Forster is the same director who brought us "Monster's Ball." This is a stunningly beautiful dreamlike film that quickly turns into a psychological nightmare, based solely on natural events and the human reactions to those events. Death touches us all, and we must learn to accept and revere it in the same spirit we supposedly accept and revere birth. It's all part of the same cycle, and we all "live forever" through the turning of this wheel.

"Everything Put Together" is a must see film and one that will stay with you. Simply incredible. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Intimist And Interesting
With its offbeat take on relationships and preoccupation with videotape, this movie is something like what Atom Egoyan might have come up with if assigned to do a screwball comedy. It was actually made by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, but the setting is somewhere in North America. (It was filmed in northwest Oregon and in Spain.) The story involves an oddball group of people whose paths tend to cross in interesting and sometimes romantic ways. In the lead role, Lili Taylor (I Shot Andy Warhol, Girls Town) tones down her usual psychotic screen persona to being merely odd and quirky and actually endearing.

A masterpiece! Lili Taylor is absolutely perfect!
Spanish director Isabel Coixet collaboration with North American actors like Lili Taylor, Andrew McCarthy, Debi Mazar or Alexis Arquette turns into a very human and tender story which tells the life of Ann (Lily Taylor), whose boyfriend, which is working in Praga, Europe, has just left her. Her reaction is sending him some videocassettes in which she personally tells all the things she never told him but she wanted to tell before. Don (Andrew McCarthy) is a house seller and a strange, lonely man. One day their lives get through. ---I would recommend this film for all the people who still keep their sensibility to see a beautiful movie..people who is saturated about violence and are waiting for the sun to shine... Alvaro ... Read more