Smoke (1995) User Reviews (87)

A nice, quiet film, light years away from the (Hollywood) mainstream

[zozon-1 · 8/10 · 24 December 2005]

The characters are genuine, funny, sensitive, tragic... just human. They are sympathetic with their small weaknesses and their daily problems. The movie gives a realistic description of the daily life of ordinary people in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn has the star role. In fact the movie seems like a declaration of love to this city, although when compared to Woody Allen's "Manhattan", the approach is completely different.

The message is in a way surprising (maybe because of my European bias): Even in this money driven, rough, fast living, time-is-money, urban and individualistic environment there is a lot of love, friendship and humanity. Humanity means also that we do things which eventually do not make very much sense, are not logical and which may be very emotional. Smoking belongs to such activities. It is an activity which needs a work break. It gives us an opportunity for a stop and for starting rethinking issues. Therefore the small cigar shop, which appears like an island within a stormy ocean, like the antipode to the bustle environment.

Sometimes some of the hurry enters the shop, but the clocks seem to tick differently there and at the end everything calms down. I like this movie.

"You'll never get it if you don't slow down, my friend."

[classicsoncall · 8/10 · 31 July 2018]

I didn't know what to think when this movie ended. There's certainly no sense of closure for many of the principal characters, with plot threads left dangling and expected reconciliations left to the viewer's own imagination. But then I thought about the title, and how the various stories had an ethereal quality, allowing the viewer to drift in and out of them much in the way smoke will gradually dissipate when exposed to it's surrounding elements. I thought more would come of Auggie's (Harvey Keitel) daily photos on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue, though they did serve as a plot device to get Paul Benjamin to slow down and contemplate each picture as an ongoing narrative in the life of the city. For his part, four thousand straight days of taking those pictures would have amounted to eleven years of doing penance for stealing a blind old woman's camera, a self imposed sentence Auggie eventually found some comfort and solace in. The two main questions I have coming out of the picture would be what Ruby (Stockard Channing) really did with the five grand, and if Rashid/Thomas was able to reconcile with his Dad (Forest Whitaker). I have my own ideas and you probably will to. Which is why a movie experience like this can be somewhat refreshing when the film makers leave things up for you to decide instead of relying on their own perspective. Viewed on a different day in a different frame of mind I might have thoroughly dismissed the picture as a pretentious flight of fancy, but as things stand, I found myself empathizing with the characters and wishing them well.

poetic photographs

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 11 January 2016]

Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel) owns a Brooklyn smoke shop where regulars hang out. He takes a photograph of his shop from the streets everyday at the same time. Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) is surprised to see his dead wife Ellen in one of the photos. She was pregnant when she was killed. Rashid (Harold Perrineau) saves Paul from on-coming traffic. In return, Paul lets Rashid stay with him and starts mentoring the young man. Rashid reconnects with his father Cyrus Cole (Forest Whitaker), who lost his arm and love in a car accident, without revealing their true relationship. Auggie's one-eyed ex Ruby McNutt (Stockard Channing) asks him for help with their pregnant daughter Felicity (Ashley Judd). Paul is assigned by the NY Times to write a Christmas story and Auggie gives him one.

I love the idea of Auggie's photographs. There is something compelling and poetic about it. These characters are interesting. Some of the stories are more compelling than others. The cast led by Hurt and Keitel are doing solid work. These lives each have their own stories but I'm not sure that every plot finishes. It's like Auggie's photographs. Every one is unique and has a story to tell but it is the congregate where the true beauty is revealed.

A beautiful depiction of humanity

[howard.schumann · 10/10 · 21 October 2002]

"It's such a sad old feeling, the fields are soft and green, it's memories that I'm stealing, but you're innocent when you dream, when you dream, you're innocent when you dream" ---Tom Waits

Smoke is a very difficult film to describe because it does not unfold with a coherent narrative, but rather with slice-of-life vignettes about chance, communication, and inter-connectedness. Author Paul Auster and director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) worked on the story for years before it reached the screen and the collaboration produces a highly literate, novelistic cinema that is divided into separate chapters, each elaborating a different character. I have seen this small masterpiece many times, but I keep watching it because I love its celebration of the simple pleasures of life: friendships, good conversation, and, of course, smoking a good cigar. Smoke is not a complex or experimental film, just a beautiful and simple delineation of humanity.

Harvey Keitel plays Auggie Wren, the owner of a small cigar store in Brooklyn. An amateur photographer as well as a raconteur of tall tales, Auggie has taken one photograph a day from the street corner outside his store every day for the past 14 years. "People say you have to travel to see the world,'' Auggie says. "Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see just about all that you can handle.'' When a friend comments that all the snapshots look alike, Auggie points out the differences: the light, the season, and the look on people's faces. It's all a matter of slowing down, Auggie says, being in present time, and observing what is in front of you.

One of the store's regular customers is writer Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) who hasn't published a novel since his wife died a few years ago in an incident of street violence. When a young Black man, Rashid Cole, (Harold Perrineau Jr.) saves Paul's life by pulling him away from on an oncoming car, Paul offers him a place to sleep. The lives of the two become intertwined in the young man's encounter with some robbers and in his search for his father, brilliantly played by Forrest Whitaker. When Auggie's former lover, Ruby (Stockard Channing), shows up, she tells Auggie he has a pregnant daughter (Ashley Judd) that now needs his help. These incidents come together in a powerful, fully realized conclusion.

Although Smoke has its moments of high drama, it is mostly a low-key, slice-of-life type of film that depicts events in life as happening for a purpose, not as random or chance occurrences. The characters are not "movie colorful", but ordinary down-to-earth people brought to realization by a flawless ensemble cast. The film reaches a sublime conclusion in a tender Christmas story narrated by Keitel and supported by Tom Waits' haunting song "Innocent When You Dream". Everyone ends up in a better place than when they started, including myself as viewer.

A quiet masterpiece of the cinema

[coop-16 · 10/10 · 18 April 2000]

I cannot begin to convey the intellectual and spiritual riches of this exquisite, almost transcendental film. I have rarely seen a motion picture with better acting or a more literate, insightful script.Harvey Keitel, John Hurt, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, Forrest Whittaker, and all the other players contribute some of their finest performances.The film itself ends with a "Christmas story' which conveys more of the religious-and humanist-meaning of that holiday than a thousand scmaltzy TV specials.Watch this movie, watch it carefully. Rarely has the beauty and sublimity concealed behind the facade of quotidian existence been better conveyed in a film.

The beauty of the commonplace, if we can see it

[csm23 · 18 May 2002]

Every once in a while, a film comes down the pike that is so refreshing, so rich, you'd swear it was inspired by some immortal spirit who condescended to take human form in order to share her perspective with us. Smoke is one such film.

Although there's nothing particularly special about each of several main characters, seemingly picked at random off of a New York street corner, they come off as noble, even heroic, in spite of the fact that their collective problems amount to nothing more than the usual garden variety. The main character, for example (Auggie Wren, played by Harvey Keitel) is a tobacconist around whose shop the main characters revolve. He has an unusual habit: every morning, at the same time of the day, he photographs the same street corner, and puts the pictures together in a series of albums. It's time-lapse photography on an enormous scale. He can't explain why he does it. He just needs to do it. And it's a really marvelous device for delivering the movie's main theme: everything that matters, all the meaning in the world that can be condensed from holy books and vows and catechisms and poems, is right there before us. We just need to have the eyes to see it. The things we tend to dismiss as prosaic, out of familiarity, emerge from the pages of his album as special, wonderful, enchanted.

There's a great line in the movie about how Sir Walter Raleigh measured the weight of smoke. He took a cigar, weighed it, smoked it, and weighed the ash. The difference between the cigar and the ash was the weight of the smoke. Although he new nothing of the chemistry of combustion, he did the best that he could, based upon what he knew. Likewise, Smoke is a movie about people with limited knowledge and perspective. Their assumptions are often wrong; but, they do the best that they can. A small, seemingly insignificant piece of information can, and does, change everything.

A solid, smart, entertaining film.

[Gogo-10 · 7/10 · 8 May 1999]

There are some wonderful performances (most notably, William Hurt's) and some great monologues. Sometimes, however, I was bothered by the dialogue which seemed too stylized and called too much attention to itself.

A movie that can be watched several times with joy

[theaudrey84 · 10/10 · 1 December 2005]

After I read the comments for Smoke, I was fascinated by the power of cinema while I realized that most of the people felt the same things as I did when they watched the movie. I watched Smoke several times without getting bored and still I sometimes watch some scenes. The characters are so real and the dialogs are so natural that I feel like I meet my friends or a part of my family when I watch it. I feel like if I went to Brooklyn, I would find that tobacco shop with Auggie sitting at the desk, chatting with others.

The beautiful scenes are also unforgettable… The first scene where Paul tells about the weight of smoke… The scene where Auggie says that the light, season and people are different in the photos that he takes every day… I also love the end, where Auggie tells the Christmas story to Paul and the white-black scene with the song of Tom Waits.

When you watch the movie, you understand that it is just the little things - a chat with your friend, a moment of happiness, a Christmas story told at lunch, a photo- and the feelings in life that matters. That's why maybe we feel so happy and relaxed when we watch the movie: We forget about the daily stress and want to be a part of Auggie Wren's world.

"If you can't share your secrets with your friends then what friend are you?"

[JoeytheBrit · 7/10 · 6 October 2005]

Wayne Wang's Smoke is one of those films that initially appears to be somewhat insignificant, which is quite fitting for a film that tries to make us see the beauty and importance of the insignificant moments that make up our lives. It's also a film about the importance of family and friends in defining who we are. Such subjects could be the recipe for an over-sentimental disaster in less capable hands, but Wang delivers a film that manages to be genuinely heartwarming while remaining relatively sentiment-free.

Centred around the tobacco shop of Auggie (Harvey Keitel), a man with a long-term obsession with photographing the same street corner at exactly the same time every day, Paul Auster's screenplay introduces us to a number of seemingly nondescript characters who all have something to contribute to the meaning of the story. There is Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) a successful writer unable to produce anything of worth since the tragic death of his wife three years before; Thomas Cole (Harold Perrineau) a young man on the run and searching for the father (Forrest Whitaker, giving a first-class performance) who abandoned him and his mother; and Auggie himself, who receives a visit from an ex-girlfriend (Stockard Channing) who claims he is the father of her junkie daughter(a truly monstrous creation from Ashley Judd). The stories intertwine, although, as with life itself, they are not all satisfactorily resolved, and the entire cast give solid performances. Even Harvey Keitel, not usually one of my favourite actors, manages to rise above his workmanlike talents to deliver a sublime performance. Wang directs without fuss, telling his story with a largely static camera, frequent long takes for a modern movie, and, it has to be said, an annoying habit of bathing the screen in a golden hue for no apparent reason. Look out for possibly the most telling scene in the entire film when Auggie is shows Paul his photograph collection – it has to stand as one of the best-written scenes of the nineties.

Like blowing square smoke rings

[britpimp · 10/10 · 5 July 2002]

This is one of the most awe inspiring movies that i have seen *EVER*. At the time of watching I was getting very bored with the standard fare Hollywood was churning out and bought this movie on a hunch after having seen an interview with 'Wayne Wang' or Paul Auster (can't remember which now!)...it totally hit me and restored my faith in film making, especially in the plain and (deceptively) simple style. The best bits of the film have to be the tale at the end, and the photograph albums. What is it?...'Everyone needs a hobby.' This is an exceptional movie, take a break from your hectic life and let the Smoke waft over you! (I should write tag-lines!! ;-) )

One Of Wayne Wangs Best Films

[scholmt · 7/10 · 11 January 2004]

The story revolves around 5 main characters whos lives meet at a tobacco store in Brooklyn and for a few days there lives criss cross leaving them all the better for it. The film is split into 5 chapters each titled after a main character and focusing mainly on them for the remainder of it. Some of the characters consist of William Hurt who plays a novelist who hasnt been the same since his wife died and Forest Whitaker who plays the failed absent father to Harold Perrineau the mixed up kid who decides to go looking for him after a tip off from his aunt.

People looking for a fast paced film should look else where as Smoke is a slow drama based on people and dialogue but once you get involved in the film you get hooked. The performances given from Hurt and Keitel in the film are excellent but for me Harold Perrineau stole the show in one of his earliest movie roles. Also special mention should got to the end credits which was nice to go out on.

One of the ten best films I have ever seen.

[Templar-5 · 10/10 · 14 November 1998]

Never before have I seen such everyday people brought to the screen in such a believable and moving way. Wang has translated Auster's story brilliantly, playing the silent observer among some great scenes where Kietel, Hurt and Perrineau shine with the dialog they are given.

This movie is slow, but it is an excellent account of how people relate to each other and behave under strained times. Hurt's character is beautifully constructed, surrounded by others who each have their own interesting story.

Its companion piece, 'Blue in the Face' is funny, but strays in a different direction. I would like to see more of these types of movies made; they explore so much, so expertly, with so little.

I'm a guy whose favourite films are 'Star Wars', 'Superman' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. But this film is such a surprise and a stand out in today's mundane slew of films that for me, I couldn't ignore it. I can't recommend this film more strongly.

very good story

[tdi-5 · 7/10 · 23 August 2008]

The casting for this movie was terrible but would have been fine for a stage production. If viewed that way it's very enjoyable but a no-name cast could have made it fly. Shame on the producers for thinking it needed help. Hurt intermittently affects an inner city accent which is somewhere between south Boston and south Bronx putting it squarely in the Atlantic Ocean. Channing is not slutty enough, probably because she doesn't try to be. Keitel coasts through his role but is never really the guide his character might be. All of the characters come across as more sophisticated than what credibility demands. It is their individual stories and their interaction which should elevate them but the director has taken that step away from us - and it shouldn't have been. I still gave it a 7 because it is a good story.

The movie contains a spoiler!

[justin_caise_iii · 1/10 · 2 September 2012]

It spoiled two evenings, because I couldn't bear to watch it in one go. A real waste of some good actors. Hurt and Keitel do their best with their trite, boring lines, but they have nothing to work with in plot, story and dialog. Most of the other acting is worth a finger down the throat. Especially awful is the little scene with the aunt. She doesn't even qualify to be an understudy in a high school play. The pacing is supposed to be moody, but it's just slow and boring. The story is a lot of sentimental claptrap -- black/white feel-good. I would be considered a liberal, but I could not stomach the smarmy, sickeningly sweet racial aspects. It's clear that all the time wasted "up in smoke" is meant for the movie atmosphere, but it is just obviously juvenile. The writer and director should be staked out on the ground and covered with syrup like this movie and left for the ants.

I have usually found some value with movies having a 7 or better, but this one destroys my faith in the IMDb ratings. I suffered to the end because of the 7.6, but next time I'll know better.

A Beautiful Film

[agvii · 19 March 2003]

Though the writing is very "stagey", the acting is fantastic all around. The more you allow yourself to get into this movie, the more you will enjoy it. The soundtrack insidiously lulls the viewer into a state where the everyday is made beautiful.

This movie is full of overlooked performances by some of today's best actors, including Forest Whitaker, Harold Perrineau Jr, (who most people know from the OZ HBO series), and Ashley Judd, whose takes one of the smallest roles in the movie but develops an extraordinary character.

Harvey Keitel and William Hurt have a dynamic in each scene that shows the true brilliance of each actor. Stockard Channing plays a character that could easily have been overacted with a style and realism that engage the viewer.

Certainly a movie you have to put yourself into, but you won't be disappointed if you do.

Get Smoke in your eyes

[cinecism-2 · 10/10 · 2 June 2000]

Wayne Wang's "Smoke" is one of those perfect little movies that knows not to aim any higher than it needs to. Like Mike Leigh's "Life is Sweet" a few years back, it closely observes the day-to-day lives of a handful of people, in this case the patrons of and workers in a Brooklyn cigar shop, and leaves it at that. Don't expect The Moral to come creeping into the dialogue; the fact that the lives of Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel, in another example of why he's the best actor working today) and his friends are compelling IS the point. Writer Paul Auster, basing his script on his op-ed story in The New York Times, keeps on chugging out smartly-written people even up to the seventh and eighth character. It's a rare treat to have an ensemble movie in which there isn't a single weak performance, and even rarer to have one supported by writing and directing that are up to the task. All of these elements come together come together in "Smoke," an artful story about the art of storytelling.

A beautiful urban poem.

[Alcaminhante · 10/10 · 24 August 1999]

SMOKE is a beautiful movie about nothing at all and at the same time about everything. I don´t even know how to describe it to someone, i guess it´s undescribable. It´s one of those rare movies that it has to be felt. If you don´t feel it, then you are missing the whole point. SMOKE is one of those rare movies which we don´t know how to recommend this to our friends, because it´s so original and simple that there is nothing to describe. Anything we might say ,it only will give the illusion this is an shallow or boring movie. SMOKE is not an adventure, not a drama, not a comedy, not a cops movie, not an action movie, so what it´s about ?!! It´s about life. But in a real way, and surprisingly not boring.

This movie is very similar to Luc Besson´s - Le Gran Bleu (The Big Blue). The story it has nothing to do with it, but it´s a movie to also be felt.

This is an actors movie, and they all do an incredible job. Sometimes they make us want to go to New York and go talk with them. Then we remember that they are not real, and we wished they were. Harvey Keitel and William Hurt are perfect in their characters and it´s a joy to watch them act. The movie could be only both of them talking to to each other, that it would still be a great and not boring movie.

This is a very well writen, acted and directed script, and we don´t find many of this everyday. And it has a fantastic soundtrack also that fits perfectly in the story. The final scenes with a Tom Waits song are realy poetic. The music almost becomes a character in the movie.

Beautiful, beautiful movie. Unmissable !

By the way, if you can, watch the "sequel" also, because it´s as good as the original. It´s called "Blue in the face". Don´t miss it.

SMOKE is a magnificent movie.

Harold Perrineau Jr. break out performance

[caspian1978 · 7/10 · 26 February 2005]

Smoke is a good example of what independent film should be. A simple story told with simple direction with an outstanding story. As much as the story is interesting, the cast is just as good. William Hurt and Harvey Keitel are excellent. Forrest Whitaker also gives a surprising role with a surprise ending that you will not see coming. Although this movie stars Keitel and Hurt, this is Harold Perrineau Jr's movie. In his mid 20's, Perrineua co-stars with a league of talented and well established actors. Since then, Perrineua has gone on to stars in a series of movies and television series including OZ. A wonderful movie with great conversation, all independent films should have a little bit of "Smoke" in them.

Smoke is the best movie about life.

[Sert-2 · 10/10 · 28 February 1999]

Excellent story from Paul Auster and wonderful work from Wayne Wang! I've seen this movie about 50 times and I'm going to continue watching it til the end of my life.This masterpiece makes me enjoy the easiest thing that I do by showing the great sides of everyday life. Harvey Keitel is on the top of his career as Auggie Wren. I think this is one of the most difficult characters to play because you have to be very naturalistic. He shows all his talent to make Auggie someone beyond us. There can never be any movie simpler and greater. You have to live this movie.

Watched the movie for a course.

[mm-39 · 6/10 · 7 March 2008]

I am taking a course at Athabasca University, and 'Smoke' is one of the movies. I was told the movie is about stories and how they shape and fade like smoke. There are 6 characters and each sub story intertwines with the other story creating the movie. Each story like the character Auggie's photography around his store tell of the progression of time. As each story unravels the viewer sees a flat character develop into a round character, with complexities and dualities. One sees the camera pan in to close ups as the viewer begins to know each character better. The message of the Christmas story is the thesis for movie. If the Christmas story is true or not or exaggerated the main theme of a good story is to be entertaining and bring joy to life. This film does such. Entertaining 6 or 7 out of 10 depending on what mood the viewers in. Bad mood a 6 and 7 in a good mood.

The Place where all Stories Meet.

[steelguitar_t10 · 10/10 · 12 January 2003]

Based on the Christmas Story that writer Paul Auster published on the New York Times on 25th December 1990 "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story".

Director Wayne Wang incorporates into the film 6 stories, from 6 people who have separate lives, but meeting in one place Auggie's Cigar Shop (played by Keitel).

The story of a somewhat frustated writer Paul Benjamin(Hurt), and his meeting with a young thug, and his father whom he never met (Whitaker).

With a beautiful photography of New York seen from each characters perspective, Auster makes a superb script and beautifully directed by Wang.

The film is a nice view of Brooklyn where all things meet.

A High-Budget Clerks? (No.)

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 23 March 2015]

A Brooklyn smoke shop is the center of neighborhood activity, and the stories of its customers.

The film starts out like "Clerks" with its setting in a smoke shop, then gets a bit more like "Pulp Fiction" by focusing on different overlapping characters. This is slightly enhanced because Harvey Keitel happens to be in the film. And, of course, it is a Miramax film. Whether they put their style on a film or buy up pictures with that style, I do not know, but there was a definite mid-1990s Miramax look.

This is pretty satisfying overall, and a great role for William Hurt, who is a fine actor and often overlooked or forgotten. Harold Perrineau is great, too, and it is a real treat to see him before "Lost", the first time I was really aware of him (with all due respect to his parts in "King of New York" and "Romeo + Juliet").

Masterly lesson in story telling, worth a best script Oscar

[OldCusser · 10/10 · 16 March 2002]

There are so many stories here, and so delectably told, that one almost swoons with pleasure. All budding writers should study it for its lessons in how to spin a tale - many tales. Tremendous laidback performance by Hurt and cheeky one by Keitel. It is hard to know who deserves best actor Oscar and who best supporting actor. Certainly should have been best picture of its year and a regular on list of ten greatest films. In brief, I'm impressed.

It gets in your eye

[wandereramor · 7/10 · 4 July 2014]

From the Miramax logo that opens it, Smoke is very much of a piece with 90s faux-indy films in the vein of Pulp Fiction or Clerks. It shares a lot of traits with this wave of films: great actors, somewhat affected dialogue, a shaky portrayal of race and a distinct sense of machismo (although not nearly as nauseating as, say, Swingers). Where Smoke differs is in rejecting the violent nihilism that often haunted this decade. Instead, this is a story about communities forming and the minor miracle that is everyday survival.

Smoke is ostensibly centred around an ordinary corner smoke shop in New York City. We follow the shop, and the people around it, over the course of a year. There's a really laudable desire here to tell the story of a social environment rather than an individualist narrative. This is a goal that the film never quite fulfills, meandering into some fairly standard family drama with a refreshing lack of narrative closure. Even when the scenario would suggest melodrama, the overall focus of the film is not on what happens to our protagonists but the bonds that form between them.

The performances are as great as you would expect from reading the cast list, although Stockard Channing's character is too underwritten for her to really shine. The script is by novelist Paul Auster, eschewing most of his postmodern experimentation for street-level human drama. (There is still a novelist named Paul with a dead wife, so I guess some things never change). Auster's dialogue is usually authentic-sounding, save for the tendency to drift into stagey monologues that never really justify themselves.

As a film, Smoke is something of a failure -- it's unable to create the sense of place it aims for without relying on hoary story lines and drama. But there's also a lot to like about the film, from the brilliant cast to the relaxed pace. It's not all it could be, but it still deserves a look.

The reviewers are the ones blowing smoke.

[typonaut-2 · 3/10 · 19 November 2000]

Pretentious, devoid of plot, minimal acting. This movie is billed on the box as a comedy, with enthusiastic endorsements of its comedic qualities excerpted from reviews. There is absolutely nothing faintly humorous about it. It is strictly a dark, pseudo-realistic portrait of New York City life. Having endured the whole thing - i borrowed it from the library and still regret it - I wonder what the reviewers were smoking. This is one of those movies where the cover, especially the photo, bears absolutely no relation to the movie. Bottom line: it seems to be a fad exploitation of the momentary fascination with cigars. Sometimes a cigar isn't worth smoking.