Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 24
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.2/5
User Ratings: 20,797
Jim Jarmusch follows his groundbreaking Stranger Than Paradise with another rambling, character-driven film with a twisted sense of humor. Set in a seedy New Orleans summer, Down By Law details the meeting of three unlikely convicts and their just as unlikely escape. Zack (Tom Waits) is an out-of-work DJ who is accused of murder when a body is found in the trunk of a stolen car he was hired to drive across town. Jack (John Lurie) is a pimp set up for a fall by a competitor. These two sullen
Oct 1, 1986 Wide
Oct 22, 2002
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
All Critics (24) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (24) | Rotten (3) | DVD (12)
The Jim Jarmusch penchant for off-the-wall characters and odd situations is very much in evidence.
On the whole I've had more fun in Cleveland.
The excitement (of Down by Law) comes from the realization that we are seeing a true film maker at work, using film to create a narrative that couldn't exist on the stage or the printed page of a novel.
A true original that kind of grows on you.
Pure pleasure for comedy connoisseurs.
It's not that the movie doesn't move fast enough, it's that while it dawdles, it doesn't give you enough to dwell on.
[An] odd, funny, strangely mesmerizing three-part comedy.
Stylish hipster comedy that delivers the laughs.
Every single incident in the film is meaningful.
Director-writer Jarmusch's characters are insignificant antiheroes adrift in an America that is both sad and beautiful.
Its soul is the same as all Jarmusch films, but here he digs a bit deeper into the roots of his own methodology and that to which he is opposed.
More cheerful than Stranger Than Paradise, this movie plays a reversal on the Hollywood comedy in which a high-spirited American usually brings joy to a foreigner; here it's Italian Roberto Benigni.
After the initial establishment of character and atmosphere, the laughs come thick and fast, most notably from the marvellous [Roberto] Benigni.
Not as good as it should be.
This two disc set is really stacked with extras.
Jarmusch's greatest film in my opinion, it features great performances from the three lead roles (especially Tom Waits who is one of my favorite artists) and beautiful black and white shots of New Orleans and the Louisiana bayou.
October 27, 2011Super Reviewer
Yes, I did only see the beginning of this movie, but I was so bored with the beginning that I couldn't watch the rest of it.
September 6, 2010Super Reviewer
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