Reviews (7)

Not a typical Jack Nicholson role
This movie is for a specific viewer, it is more of a social commentary than entertainment. Yet, you will enjoy Jack's and Meryl's performances, they are great as always.

Albany, 1938
William Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize novel set to film, the story takes place in Albany in 1938 (with some flashbacks to earlier times). Jack Nicholson is Frances Phelen, a once promising ballplayer who accidentally dropped his baby son, which killed the boy and sent him on the skids to becoming a bum with a ghost-filled past he can't forget. Meryl Streep is Helen Archer, an old flame of Phelen's who too is down on her luck. Nothing much happens in the movie; it's mostly atmosphere: skid row, old memories, etc. At 144 minutes it's way too long--we lose interest in the characters, even though their acting is superb. If only it had been focused a little more--it sort of just drifts along where it should have been nailed down.

This could be the most depressing movie ever made!
This could be the most depressing movie ever made! Don't watch it with a loaded gun in your hand.

Hard to sit through
Jack Nicholson normally plays roles of blistering intensity, but in 'Ironweed', he plays an aging, burned out bum.Nothing wrong with that, but Nicholson didn't seem right for it.Maybe DeNiro would have been more convincing.Nonetheless, the story is about a bum who keeps having flashbacks of his younger days when he was fighting working man.Apparently he accidently killed three people in his lifetime.All the killings were show in chronological order as 'Ironweed' progressed.I wasn't able to see the last killing because I couldn't finish the film.Only for die-hard Nicholson and Streep fans.

Breathtakingly sad & beautiful
Where do you start with a movie like this? The cinematography & art direction are stunning. Every single shot, every frame, is a Hopperesque masterpiece: colors, lighting, composition. It grabs you way way deep inside. The writing is of a rare pureness: concentrated & intense & head-spining. The excellent writer William Kennedy wrote the screenplay from his Pulitzer prize-winning masterpiece of a novel. You can't get better than that. And then the acting. What acting! Where to start? Tom Waits who sings even when he acts. Jack Nicholson always reaching - out & deep inside - tremendous! Never better. And the exquisitely divine (sorry, can't help it) Meryl Streep: beautiful, heartwrenching, pathetic, laughable, lovable & real. The part of a lifetime, no not just a lifetime, the part of an entire movie-making era. Lastly the direction by the masterful Hector Babenco. Thank you Snr. Babenco. You belong in the pantheon with Von Stroheim, Renoir, Fellini. Thank you. So why has this film fallen into the void of video oblivion? I guess because it's an honest no melodramatics or histrionics depiction of bums - real people who represent the alternative lives that all of us could be leading but would really prefer never be reminded of. ... Read more