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Thanks for the memories!

Excellent but underrated film

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This was an awesome movie. There was great attention to detail:-One adviser was dressing for a costume party. He was going as superman. This was great symbolism: He was pretending to be superman as an adviser. -One adviser (Cohen) yelled "take the drive" as a traffic suggestion. This was great symbolism: he was always giving bad advice. (The drive was jammed with traffic.) -A woman tells the cab driver: "Can we take the Parkway?" He responded: "How can you do that?" (It was impossible to magically switch to another road.) Again, this was great symbolism because the characters in the movie were "locked in" and couldn't find a way out.Anyways, I loved it.

"Barbarians at the Gates" is the insane true story of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. The stars are James Garner, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Riegert, Joanna Cassidy, Fred Dalton Thompson, Jeffrey DeMunn, Tom Aldredge, and David Rasche.Upset that the stock price for RJR Nabisco isn't rising, and realizing that new item that was to raise it, Premier Cigarettes, taste and smell horrible, F. Ross Johnson (Garner), the CEO, decides to buy the company at $75 a share, which is $4 more than the stock's highest price. He gets the idea after talking to an expert in the LBO field, Henry Kravis (Pryce). When Kravis finds out that he's not involved in this LBO, he becomes upset. Soon, thanks to press releases that come out too soon, and embarrassing information hitting the papers, there are not only many players in the field, but the price being bid has gone up to $112 a share, meaning that the company will be put into billions and billions of dollars in debt.The battle of egos is outrageous and all too believable in this story of what became a gigantic takeover contest. The film compresses some of the incidents, but the characters and behind the scenes happenings make it an intriguing, entertaining, and ultimately depressing story. Outside the New York office, one is shown countless homeless people while inside, people are talking about billions of dollars. A true '80s story of greed.James Garner is fantastic and funny as good old boy, F. Ross Johnson, who gets into a game of oneupmanship with the elegant, quietly intense Kravis - Jonathan Pryce gives a tremendous performance as a man seething underneath while speaking very softly. Peter Riegert, as the man trying to put together the deal for Shearson Lehman is wonderful, as are two actors I've had the privilege of seeing on stage, Tom Aldredge as the head of the board of RJR Nabisco, and David Rasche, as a banker trying to get in on the deal. Fred Dalton Thompson and Joanna Cassidy are a married couple - she's the publicist for the LBO, and he's the CEO of American Express.After seeing the documentary about Enron, I really thought nothing could top it. This does. If you want to be appalled by corporate behavior, don't miss it.

There are zero likable characters in this film. Everyone is strictly out for themselves, and how much they stand to gain from a leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. The battle for the company between James Garner and Jonathan Pryce is the primary focus of "Barbarians at the Gate". The best attribute of this movie is not the acting, not the story, but the sharp dialog. The outcome is always in doubt, but the greed is always obvious. In the final analysis, this comes across more like a business instructional film than entertainment. The whole thing is rather sterile, because there really are no heroes to root for. ................................... MERK

I read once, in James Garner's Biography, that he did roles in quality TV like (Barbarians at the Gate). Now whoever wrote this lie will burn in hell forever, because this movie isn't quality TV, unless TV stands for Tormenting Vanity ! It's natural that too much of something is bad enough. Here you are a movie to know that better. The dialog is just TOO DAMN MUCH to unbearable degree. It could destroy the movie and us.The first 20 minutes are a headache. The characters speak with tons of elegant gibberish. The dialog has too many very deep information, and most of all it goes on non-stop too. Plus, it couldn't make any tie-in between us and the main character. I couldn't make any initial viewpoint towards him. They were busy making him talk, talk, and talk for all the time without presenting him appropriately. So, it was exactly like a stock market program, running annoyingly on-screen, without any drama but the tragic one in my brain !After that…the stock market channel breaks loose. There are more stiff characters in suits (too many, with no true presentation, so with the unbroken mentioning of their names I couldn't tell who's who ?!). And the case is that we have them talking in great energy, with more of the same – fully detailed – gibberish, without funny comedy, clear drama, something to understand, or a MOMENT OF SILENCE ! The scriptwriter of this movie is one rare person. He proved for someone like me, who watched countless good and bad American movies before, that America has real windbag scripts! That lethal flaw I saw in many not American movies. But who said that anyone or anything is perfect. Actually its dialog can fill 3 movies and 4 newspapers I don't buy ! The main event, as I desperately understood, is ironic, satirical, and supposedly hot. But this 1000-words-per-minute dealing made it like a sweeping speech torrent where nothing is distinct or intelligible from start till the very end; why they selected the lower offer ? The lead is portrayed eventually like a defeated knight, so why he's a knight ? Why they wanted to defeat him ? And how they did it ?!! I'll never know…from this movie ! To make the matter worse, (Glenn Jordan)'s directing was dead, literally dead. The image doesn't say a thing. I believe there isn't one in the first place, since none was portrayed by it. All what I saw is people talk while walking across closed rooms, and that's it. Without much concentration, you can notice that (Jordan) intended to wrap it up as fast as he can, even if so many things, if not all the things, died out of heart failure, or we did earlier out of apoplexy. Hence the outcome was the most long, unfunny and humdrum sitcom's episode in history !The sets are all the same. Forget the cinematography. The music is primitive electronic thing; aside from being wearisome, it fits more a kid's show. Save (Jonathan Pryce), all the actors talked the same tone. The good acting was like a fish in deep black water; hard to hunt, and hard to see. The editing made the movie so crowded without a space to breathe. Sometimes I wanted the cast to speak slower, sometimes I wanted a translation's boards, and sometimes I wanted to just scream !So, with no smart writing and no directing this lost its way, being a huge turn-off. Whenever I recall an American movie where its dialog ruined it, this is the first one to remember. I saw theatricals, but flu hallucination, with more vitality and less talks. (Barbarians at the Gate) isn't a comedy about money. It's a nightmare about something I, with considerable struggle, couldn't totally catch on!Uninteresting isn't the right word for it. It's SHUT UP !