Tin Men [1987]

Customer Reviews:

A Cult Classic.......2005-07-09

This film was recommended to me by a friend, and I was really not expecting that much from it. However, the film is a real gem. The setting and style are beautifully realised and it feels very of the time, the acting from Dreyfuss and DeVito also works well as a double act and one cannot help becoming caught up in the events.
Very enjoyable.

Tin Men Close the Deal.......2005-04-19

This film is quite simply a joy to watch. Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, two "aloominum" cladding salesmen play out an escalating and highly amusing war of "getting even" following a fender bender, but the times they are a changin in the home improvement sales world of 1960's Baltimore and events soon overtake them as they try to eek out a living.

A wonderfully shot period piece including beautifully understated supporting roles by Barbara Hershey and John Mahoney (better known as 'Marty Crane' from TV's 'Frasier'), amongst others, you will be hard pressed to feel anything but warm hearted by the time this tale of ordinary folk drives off into the atmospheric freeze frame ending. Coupled with a great soundtrack dominated by the best of The Fine Young Cannibals (who also appear as the band in the local dancehall where the sales guys hang out) this DVD is a must have for any film collector and one to enjoy again and again. The R2 version is presented in widescreen and both print and sound are excellent (you will want to stomp your feet as "good things" plays out over the end credits). No self-congratulatory cast and crew featurama or making of appears amongst the extras - instead you get a documentary on the fake stone-cladding that crept all over Baltimore's buildings in the 1960's (including an interview with John Waters on the cladding, not the film). Says it all really - pure class.

Tin Men with a simply lovable heart.......2004-07-16

For filmmakers these days it's all too easy to sledgehammer audiences with mind-bogglingly realistic computer graphics in order to emulsion a movie that is fundamentally flawed in a good & coherent storyline.You only have to watch, as a recent example that immediately springs to mind , the ghastly Vertical Limit.To make my point further, and not that I place the LOTR trilogy in that category, but how many people would sit through 12 hours total of Tolkien literary pomp if it wasn't for the superb graphics?!
Why this observation? Tin Men by conspicuous contrast has no special effects whatsoever; nobody gets killed or maimed;there are no drug-dealers,pimps or whores;no car chases; no gratuitous sex scenes & no goggle-eyed aliens ready to take over the world! What it DOES have is Danny Devito & Richard Dreyfuss and ALL the supporting cast in stupendous comedic form.And I don't mean juvenile brat-pack slapstick either (that would be difficult as the average age would be about 50!). OK it wont have you belly-laughing loudly but the comedy comes from the superb banter between the characters and the very engaging storyline that is based on an on-going battle between Devito & Dreyfuss who are rival 'tin-men': aluminium or "aloo-min-num " sidings (cladding) salesmen, who after a disputed car accident seek to exert revenge on each other.
Why THIS film hasn't won a dozen Oscars is a mystery!

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