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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Barfly (1987)

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

To All My Friends

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Barfly on DVD.

With Hollywood dreck like Kiss of Death and Before and After on his resume, The Iranian-born Barbet Schroeder is not exactly a cool director, but he has made one cool film.

Barfly (1987, Warner Brothers, $19.98) is a love-it or hate-it cult item written by Charles Bukowski as a kind of autobiographical look at a few days in his early life as a writer.

Mickey Rourke plays Henry Chinaski with a huge, swaggering bravado and a murmuring slur, and still manages to stammer out many quotable lines, like his toast "to aaaaallll my friiieeeeenndss." Faye Dunaway co-stars as the beautiful older woman who occupies his attention during these few drunken days.

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige, Jack Nance, Frank Stallone, Pruitt Taylor Vince
Written by: Charles Bukowski
Directed by: Barbet Schroeder
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 97 minutes
Date: September 3, 2002