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Tin Men
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by Buena Vista Home Video
Sales Rank: 2002
Price: $9.99
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<i>Tin Men</i>, the second in Barry Levinson's ongoing film series about his native Baltimore in the 1950s and '60s, focuses on a pair of competing aluminum-siding salesman at a point when the industry was loaded with scam artists. Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito play rivals who get involved in a fender-bender that quickly escalates from a minor argument into an all-out war, as they begin pulling practical jokes on each other. Dreyfuss takes it too far, however, when he sets out to seduce DeVito's unhappy wife (Barbara Hershey) and winds up falling in love with her. Much of the humor here comes from Levinson's keen ear as writer and director for the way these people talk--and what they talk about (like the discussion of why four men are living together without women on the Ponderosa in <I>Bonanza</I>). Beside the leads, the cast includes a great host of character actors, including Jackie Gayle, Bruno Kirby, John Mahoney, and J.T. Walsh. Others in Levinson's body of Baltimore films are <I>Diner</I>, <I>Avalon</I>, and the most recent, <I>Liberty Heights</I>. <I>--Marshall Fine</I>
Viewer Reviews
Twenty years past its release date, Tin Men remains a keeper. Danny DeVito may have worn out his exasperated/enraged small man schtick by now, but in 1987 it was still fresh. Like Diner, Tin Men is set in end-of-an-era Baltimore, 1963, and so much that is in it has disappeared or declined. Crowd noise from old Memorial Stadium fills a part of one scene and the camera captures those brick row houses that lined the streets around the stadium in their prime. The Life Magazine scam scene and the diner and driving riffs on Bonanza are laugh out loud funny. In an excellent cast -- not only of leads, but with some of the era's best supporting players --, Barbara Hershey as the wife caught between the tantrums of shady aluminum siding salesmen stands out. And the fender level camera view of the tin men parking their perfect Cadillacs is auto nostalgia at its best. Overall, Tin Men serves up that nostalgia, but also wry look at human nature, and a well-shot picture of a working and living city into an enduring package. It is one very good movie.
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