First Mamet Character: And what if she brings it (the gun) what will we do then?
Second Mamet character: Whatever we want.
A movie in three parts about three separate yet connected cons.
David Mamet is an extraordinary and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who has also directed several of his own works.
You know Mamet when you hear it, because nothing else sounds quite like. Even his imitators, of which there are many, struggle to get near it. They being the difference between corn on the cob and corn liquor. Other people attack him and Sorkin and Whedon and the other great writers who elevate their craft with a unique style.
Mostly, that’s because they couldn’t do it if they tried and because they have tried and failed and must suffer like the rest of us knowing that they are a mob of Salieri (Salieri being the plural of Salieri) doomed to be rightly jealous of Mozart.
Anyway, Henry Johnson is not, I should hasten to add, top shelf Mamet. It is not Johnny Walker Blue.
The first section is note perfect. And the old man shows he can still call down the thunder. And in particular, in each section, he shows his gift for slamming shut the door.
But the first is the best of these.
The other two sections, the other two sections … well the other two sections get bogged down.
It’s a short movie but they go on too long.
Lightning still streaks across the sky from time to time but not as much and not as durable as in that opening.
Let me now quote one of my favorite lines of Mamet dialogue from one of my favorite of his flicks, “Baby, you got old.”
And yet, I would take old man Mamet, a million times out of a million before some others who in a better world would have spent their lives as bricklayers or ditch diggers or in some other noble profession instead of becoming used car salesman masquerading as writers.
I found Henry Johnson mostly remarkable and so I have remarked on it. And now I shall move on.
“That’s all.”
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