American Gigolo (1980)

Despite having written some of Hollywood's most engaging films (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Cat People), Paul Schrader now takes the director's seat for 1980's drama, "American Gigolo". The film is a slow (very slow at times) paced drama about a young "scort service" man played by a very young Richard Gere, who gets framed in the brutal murder of one of his ex clients and wife to a Palm Springs millionaire. The life of Julian Kay (Richard Gere) is simple: he gives satisfaction to L.A's lonely and rich Hollywood wives while being handsomely paid for it. From the start, I assume something will eventually go wrong. Julian always keeps a distance from his customers by never getting "too involved" in any way with them. One day he gets a call from an old "friend" who begs him to take a job in Palm Springs; a rich couple into kinky and rough sex, with the husband on the peeping Tom side. The husband asks Julian to handcuff his wife and take her from behind and beat her, to which I assume Julian reluctantly obliges before the scene fades out. Soon after it's all over the news that the kinky wife is found murdered and Julian becomes the prime suspect. All this happens as Julian slowly develops a relationship with his new client, Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton), the wife of an up and rising politician. Michelle begins to fall in love with Julian, and he struggles to avoid falling in love too with her."American Gigolo" has a lot going for it, starting with the rousing Blondie hit, "Call Me", which remains as the musical theme throughout the movie. What kills this movie is its decidedly slow pace and bland acting from the young Gere. We know he is a lonely man, doing what does best to get by, but not necessarily liking all of it. When he gets framed for murder, little do we know the reasons behind it and little explanation is given to the audience. The reasons behind Julian's friend Leon (William Duke, from "Predator"), turning on him are really never addressed, except that he was "frameable", which isn't saying much. All we know is that Mrs. Stratton's husband is behind the framing, which is weird, coming from a man who knows before hand his wife cheats on him and doesn't seem to care (on the outside).With all the Hollywood reboots and rehashes going on today, a film like this one could easily be improved upon, perhaps making Julian's past (which we know little from other characters) a bit darker. With "Gigolo" in its title, you'd expect more sex and even by 1980's standards, the sex is pretty restrained. All in all, "American Gigolo" will be best remembered as an early Richard Gere vehicle and the film that featured Blondie's last, enduring hit single, "Call Me".

I know different actors and such but same time frame of the 80's and same theme one center focused actor and some awesome cast. The way movies should continue to be written there really has not been an new recent movies that have hit me like the old movies do. This came up as a recommendation on x1 and man i am impressed, just noticed detective is same actor from fear and loathing and i love that movie also. This movie was so much ahead of its time with the topics and such they were discussing in the movie. Very well written another one of Richard Gere's roles that will always impress the fans. Just got to the part where he is shopping in the vinyl section, boy do i wish i had kept some of my old vinyl's.

Growing-up in the 80's I give that decade's movies the extra benefit of the doubt. Such is the case for Paul Schrader's "American Gigolo", which is a pretty standard flick from then,although it helped launch a younger Richard Gere's career during the time - "An Officer and a Gentleman" is probably Gere's finest. The movie reminds a bit of Risky Business though not nearly as endearing or well done. Gigolo's murder mystery takes a back seat to the steamy romance between Gere's and Lauren Hutton's characters, the real draw and centerpiece of the movie. An early scene beginning scene with them both speaking French steals the show. It's easily the best scene in the movie. Mildly recommended thanks to the romance. Say a 6.8/10

Paul Schrader has always come across to me as a particularly graceless screenwriter and especially director. Although he can create intense moments and thoughtful compositions, even a sense of stylishness, there is also a heavy element of cheesiness to the texture of his films, similar in many ways to the feel of Brian De Palma's work.However, "American Gigolo" is one of his more creditable efforts. There is sufficient intrigue in the film's second-half, once the crime narrative gets going, to hold one's attention. There is also a certain sordidness that is well-captured about a subsection of petty criminal to whom money, sex, clothes, social status are everything, and human beings nothing. Richard Gere and Schrader ably convey a sense of purposeless and drifting loneliness in the character of Julian Kaye. One has to ask, though: Isn't Schrader embarrassed to copy Bresson's "Pickpocket" so brazenly, as he has done in other films? His application of Bresson's themes to Gere's character here seemed strained at best. And anyway, no matter how skilled the filmmaker (and Schrader isn't all that skilled), you can't really effectively execute what Bresson pulled off within the context of a Hollywood film. There's too much surface nonsense, commercialism, and gratuitousness to arrive at the sublime emotional and intellectual rewards produced by the no-compromise "Pickpocket," "A Man Escape," "Mouchette," and "L'Argent."6/10.