Brazil

Wild, crazy, deranged, and totally out-of-this world material that blows your mind. Brazil is one of those movies that you watch just because you wonder what strange and far-out thing will happen next.

The story is a basic one. And one that I would connect today if this films wasn't so eclectic. Sam Lowry works for the Ministry of Information. The Ministry goes after "suspected terrorists". In the movie, a mistake is made and instead of Tuttle, a Buttle is taken. This man is taken from his family and eventually winds up dying. A woman happens to witness this and adamantly and persistently asks for help in correcting the mistake. To no surprise, the Ministry is not helpful. That story is good enough on its own. But...

...Add the fact that Sam Lowry is psychologically unsound. He has the hots for this woman who has discovered the mistake. He DREAMS about her. And these dreams are far-out out of this world. Also, every woman over 50 apparently gets a form of primitive facelifting to get rid of wrinkles that greatly affects life. That is not central to the storyline. In fact, if anything, that part detracts.

De Niro is Tuttle who is this heat engineer who could easily be a comic book hero had Terry Gilliam pursued the idea. He steals every scene that he is in, which is amazing considering the fact that I think he is in like 5 or 6 out of the entire 142 minutes of the film. Bob Hoskins also caught my eye as a magnificent character in this.

The best part of it all comes at the end. There is a grand finale of sorts that Terry Gilliam puts on that blew my mind. Great.

What I didn't like though were some of the dialogue scenes that seemed to be repetitive and drawn out. I wasn't sure that some of these scenes needed to be as long as they were and I lost focus. The overall plot was complicated by these sometimes too and clouded the main points of the movie. But I guess that kind of thing is what would warrant a revisiting of this masterpiece.

8/10



Solid flick. Great entertainment.