American Heart (1993)

Showing off hair and muscles made to cover romance novels, convicted bank robber Jeff Bridges (as Jack Kelson) is washing up in a public bathroom when his 14-year-old son Edward Furlong (as Nick Kelson) enters. Young Furlong wants to live in Seattle with his newly-paroled father. After unsuccessfully trying to get the kid to go back to his aunt's farm, Mr. Bridges relents. They move into a cheap apartment and Bridges gets a job washing windows. His sleazy ex-partner in crime Don Harvey (as Rainey) tries to get Bridges back in business, and also attempts to recruit Furlong plus his friend Christian Frizzell (as Rollie)...Bridges wants to go straight and move to Alaska. Furlong gets a job selling newspapers. Bridges drinks heavily and beds prison pen pal Lucinda Jenney (as Charlotte). Furlong kisses budding prostitute Tracey Kapisky (as Molly) and hangs out with the streetwise crowd. There is joy in watching a father getting to know and care for his son as both temper wild impulses. This makes their setbacks sad. Every so often, we are reminded something is not genuine, but Bridges and director Martin Bell hold it together on the star's characterization. The subject matter winds up depressing, but effective. Life is hard.****** American Heart (5/92) Martin Bell ~ Jeff Bridges, Edward Furlong, Lucinda Jenney, Don Harvey

An absolutely powerful movie with Jeff Bridges giving a sensational performance as a recently released prisoner connecting with his young son.This is definitely a film which shows the importance of environment in the lives of our protagonists. The Bridges character wants to go straight but is held back by environmental influences, and not being able to secure employment doesn't help the situation.His intelligent but emotionally wrought son wants to know more about his hooker mother. In constant outbursts with his father, he soon falls into the mean streets of the city and with other outcasts as well.While the ending of the film is tragic, there is hope for the new generation.

This is a dramatic, narrative film by Martin Bell, the director of the excellent documentary "Streetwise". And while it is obvious Bell was a little uncomfortable with the narrative format, it is one of the few independent films of the 1990's that doesn't suffer from the Quentin Tarantino syndrome--i.e. it is not just a pastiche of other movies the director has seen. It's clear Bell based a lot of this movie on real life. In fact, many of the characters here were obviously based on real people in "Streetwise"--the kid and his ex-con father, the tomboy lesbian, the 14-year-old amateur hooker. The movies suffers a little in comparison to early Gus Van Sant films ("Mala Noche","Drugstore Cowboy", "My Own Private Idaho")which had similar down-and-out characters and were also set in the American Northwest. But many will find this film refreshingly honest and less pretentious, at least, than some of Van Sant's films.What really makes this film is the acting. It marked Jeff Bridges return to independent film (five or six years before "The Big Lebowski"), and his performance here makes one forgive him for the Hollywood crap he made in the 80's like "Against All Odds". Edward Furlong is also very good. I remember reading some alarmist claptrap about him in Premiere magazine around the time of this movie, about how he was dating a 30-year-old woman (oh, the horror! the horror!) and about to become another young Hollywood casualty. Well, starting with this film he ended up carving a nice little niche for himself in independent film (i.e. "Pecker", "Animal Factory"). Turns out that just because you're not starring in "Terminator 3" it doesn't necessarily mean you're sharing needles in a crack house with guys named Corey and girls named Shannen. And as a little icing on the cake this movie has a great Tom Waits theme song which you can't find any of his albums. Definitely a recommended movie.

Yes, for me anyway, this movie was truly hard to like. That's because, being from Seattle, I found it at times painful to watch such a story (set in my beautiful native city that I love so much) that so uncompromisingly focuses on a decidedly meaner and uglier side of life (no, you'll see no mention of Bill Gates, Microsoft, Boeing, Nordstroms, or Starbucks coffee in this movie!). But eventually (after several viewings) I concluded that the postcard settings of the movie only help add to the symbolic texture of the story: beautiful, picturesque cities don't necessarily beautiful lives make.Stated plainly, this is a powerful drama that tells a powerful story: Jack (Jeff Bridges), just released from prison, ends up in Seattle, where he must fight like hell to find work and keep his own life straight and together (he is, afterall, being monitored by a parole officer)... and by the way, he also has an adolescent son (nicely portrayed by Edward Furlong) who shows up to live with him - a son who is desperately in need of parental guidance, caretaking, and some semblance of a positive role model for a father. Complications ensue, as they say... The story is told with genuinely fine, heartfelt acting from all involved. Maybe it's just that it was filmed in my native city, or maybe it's just that it stands on its own merits, I don't know, but I found this movie to be pretty powerful stuff: it really got to me! This is easily one of the best dramas I've seen in a long time (another drama that I recently saw and was greatly moved by was "Vampire's Kiss" with Nicolas Cage). The ending of American Heart seems perhaps a little contrived, almost as if it came straight out of some Greek tragedy. And yet somehow I appreciate the fact that the ending is decidedly *not* a happy, "Hollywood" one, instead it seems so fitting and appropriate a denouement of all that has just transpired in the film. Watch the movie, I don't think you'll disagree.I know I risk being thought a nitpicker by even mentioning this, but, being from Seattle I couldn't help but notice that there seem to be some things in the movie that aren't quite "correct", at least from an actual Seattle setting... well, okay, let's just say they embellished the story with a few "surreal" elements: the gang of brightly costumed street kids seems a bit contrived, as does the bar scene where Jack puts the make on the taxicab lady (these seem more Hollywood than Seattle. Also, kids don't hang out in the streets here all that much. It rains too damned much!). And I noticed here and there that they take some "indecent liberties" with facts of Seattle geography. An example: in one scene, Jack is seen leaving his apartment in the Queen Anne Hill area (northwest of downtown Seattle) and hopping on a bicycle, and then, after what appears to be just minutes later, is shown casually hanging out on a wharf with a fantastic, east-looking view of the skyline of Seattle. Really, to achieve such a vantage point, he would had to have pedaled his bike to somewhere out in Eliot Bay, or perhaps over to Duwamish Head (a considerable distance away)... again, either geographically impossible, given the layout of the Seattle harbor, or chronologically impossible, given the time limitations of the filmed sequence. There are other little areas in the film where Seattle gets "bent and stretched". I won't list them, instead (as a fun little exercise in sleuthing) urge all of you who are from Seattle, or who have spent some time here, to watch this movie and really look at things carefully and ask yourself "is that real, or is that the magic of film editing?" Again, this is only just for fun, I don't at all mean to be nitpicking the movie, because the story itself is far more important than the actual setting. And as the previous commenter noted, the basic story could happen anywhere... which, in itself, is part of the powerful statement of the movie.