slightlymad22 Continuing my plan to watch every Johnny Depp movie in order, I come to Dead Man (1995)The trailer doesn't do a good job of selling what the movie is about at all. William Blake (Depp) is traveling from Cleveland, to the Western town of Machine, where he has been promised an accounting job at the Dickinson Steel Works. When he arrives, office manager explains that the job no longer exists. Blake confronts the owner of the mill (Robert Mitchum) who pulls a shotgun on Blake. Broke and depressed Blake befriends a flower girl, and before long he is bed with her. The girl's lover bursts in and shoots her. Blake shoots the man, is shot himself but manages to flee. Thevdead man is Dickinson's son, and the mill owner hires men to track and kill Blake. The next morning Blake regains consciousness in the forest to find his wound being tended by the Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer) The two men go on a journey pursued by the killers, in search of Blake's ultimate destiny. In his second black and white movie in a row, Depp is as brilliant as always. The problem is the slow plodding pace and its just so bland. There are bursts of tremendous creativity and some shocking violence but mostly I was bored.There are slow burners and slow moving movies. This movie feels a lot longer than it's 2 hour run time. Dead Man grossed $1 million at the domestic box office to be the fourth Depp movie in a row to flop at the domestic box office. It was also his third movie in a row not top place on the 100 highest grossers of the year. His private life was a bit of a mess at this time too. He was dating Kate Moss and was arrested several times.

Movie_Muse_Reviews Exactly what kind of journey is "Dead Man?" Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch's longtime fascination with finding and living the American Dream amidst a landscape of lawlessness and randomness takes a most exotic turn in his 1995 film starring Johnny Depp. Whether the main character is already dead and traveling to eternal rest or on an inevitable trajectory to death is just one of the film's big questions."Dead Man" gravitates between a spiritual plane and a firmly rooted, quite visceral Western landscape. Depp's William Blake anxiously awaits his arrival in Machine, at the farthest end of the Western frontier (sometime in the late 1800s), when he's confronted by the train's fireman (Crispin Glover), the line of questioning serves both an expository and foreshadowing poetic purpose, a clear first signal of the film's intention to straddle the line between reality and ethereality. With a foot firmly in each plane, "Dead Man" becomes quite an experience to grapple with as a viewer. We see clearly what's happening to Blake as he's denied the job he was promised, ends up killing a man and flees into the wilderness, where a Native American outcast named Nobody (Gary Farmer) becomes his guide. Yet his transformation is something else entirely. The poetry-quoting dialogue and score from Neil Young (yes, that Neil Young), featuring a pervasive distorted electric guitar motif, keep us on edge as a reminder never to quite settle into – or be fooled by – the Western genre trappings. Rarely does a film come across as both esoteric and gut-smackingly funny. Levity is an unexpected partner on Blake's journey, and at times in a blue collar sort of way. Just when Jarmusch suckers you into thinking seriously about the film, a line of dialogue or a particular character will pop out of nowhere, perfectly timed and with the perfectly complementary tone. Farmer, Michael Wincott as one of the bounty hunters after Blake, and the trio of Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thorton and Jared Harris are among the comedy standouts. Jarmusch will simply not allow us to take anything too seriously, even though we do have to engage with his film intellectually at times to make the most of it. This contradiction ultimately serves Jarmusch's likely intent that his film can't be viewed in just any one, clearly interpreted way.Also countering the humorous tones are starkly violent ones. Some of the violent moments hit comedic notes whether intentionally or not, but many of them come across as brusque and disturbing. Fairness, or anything reminiscent of a moral arc, is far from Jarmusch's interest as a storyteller. Death in this film is an obvious byproduct of Blake's road to certain death or his soul's road through hell to peace, depending how you interpret things. In fact, each progressive death that Blake is involved in serves to transform him from stuffy accountant to outlaw. Discarded by the world, Blake's choice to keep stepping into the role falling into place before him is at the heart of the movie.Of all his early work, "Dead Man" is certainly Jarmusch's richest film. The Western genre was also a perfect match with the filmmaker's world view and themes of interest. His preference for vignettes and scenes of a shorter length bookended by fades to black makes a little less sense here because the trajectory of Blake's story is so sure-footed, but it serves as a nice way to organize and think about the film as it's happening. "Dead Man" might be a film that never fully makes sense, no matter how many times you watch it, but the right person in the right frame of mind can find moments that resonate and reach an interpretation that justifies its unusual dual nature.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

Robert J. Maxwell The plot is familiar enough. An innocent accountant in the old West is accused by the local strong man of killing his son and stealing his fine, spirited pinto horse. The head honcho is played by a magnificently coiffured Robert Mitchum, ably assisted by my one-time co-star John Hurt. Which reminds me -- what a cast. Half a dozen famous names showed up for one day's work. The accountant is injured and wobbles across rivers and over mountains at the timberline until he is discovered by an all-knowing and endearing Indian. The Indian is pretty weird but then, if the plot is familiar, perishing white man saved by Indians, the treatment is like nothing much you've ever seen before.Lance Henrickson, whose work I've always enjoyed, is a heartless killer who shoots comrades in the back of the head on a whim. Gary Farmer is the plump Indian whose people are slowly being wiped out by the white eyes. He can smell them a mile away. They sell blankets smothered in the variola virus -- smallpox, which is a bad way to go unless you enjoy the sensation of your pustular skin sloughing off. Yet the Indian doesn't make a speech out of it. He's not a figure of pity. There's just a passing mention of these goings on.As the Indian, Farmer was captured by while people as a child and sent in a cage from one city to another so the citizens could pay to take a look at the barbarian. At one point he found himself in England, where they forced him to go to school,. The name of the protagonist's character, played by Johnny Depp, is William Blake and Farmer adores the work of THE William Blake and gets his protogé mixed up with the author. He quotes the original Blake at odd moments, and not just "Tiger, tiger, burning bright," but the mystical stuff that nobody understands.It ends on America's Northwest Coast, all rain, mist, decay, and sea scent. The viewer ought to take note of the art work. It's pretty distinctive and, if I can say so, quite beautiful in its own way, as stylized as the film itself. I don't think I'll spell out the end. It objectifies James Joyce's observation: "We'll meet again, we'll part once more."

ppel-31667 Is the movie reflecting the actual living status of men at that time? Everyone except Thel in the town of machine looked hopeless, indifferent, abnormal, cold. I would doubt it's really this way in real life of that time.Secondly, this movie exposed a lot of shootings. Why did the men don't treat life seriously? Why did they shoot for trivial matters? For example, Charlie was so stupid to shoot Blake. And the reaction of shooting each other did not look realistic. There was no panic in shooting. And when one was shooting another, the other just stood there. Supposedly, the proper and instinctive reaction of the other being shot should be dodging, staying low, or moving aside to avoid being shot. But look at the scene where the shooting between Nobody and Cole, neither Nobody nor Cole dodged or stayed low during the shooting, which did not look real.