Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786304766019 Format: Color, NTSC ISBN: 6304766017 Label: Polygram USA Video Manufacturer: Polygram USA Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Polygram USA Video Release Date: June 30, 1998 Running Time: 103 minutes Sales Rank: 1670 Studio: Polygram USA Video Theatrical Release Date: September 19, 1997
Amazon.com: The Dan Wakefield novel upon which this film was based has been hailed by critics as another Catcher in the Rye, but you wouldn't know that from this unenlightening adaptation. Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan) plays a superneurotic, Korean War veteran who develops an unlikely friendship with another, Neal Cassady-like vet (Ben Affleck) as well as a taste in art, New York City, and college girls. The trouble with the film is that it refuses to yield important information about its central figure. Davies's character has some kind of undefined problem with his mother, religion, ambition, masturbation, and much else, but without access to his internal dialogue, we only see him as a twitchy insect for whom regular sex with a beautiful girlfriend inexplicably does nothing for his ego. Don't blame Davies: he does this nerve-damaged bit all the time, and in the hands of a good director his performances are controlled and economical (see Spanking the Monkey). However, his director on Going All the Way--Mark Pellington--has no idea of how to shape the actor's abilities. --Tom Keogh
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Average Rating:
Rating: - Disappointing
The book was one of the most funny I've read, and the film just didn't do it justice. One improvement is that Sonny's character is much sweeter and more likeable in the film than in the book, but the finer points of the story have been lost. The part about the beard, for example, which wasn't just very touching, and funny, but incredibly shocking to someone born in 1964 and had never known a time when beards were downright subversive! All the actors were excellent--but more of the book could have been written into the film.
Also, to a previous reviewer, the time frame of the story is in the early '50's--they were NOT returning from the Vietnam War! The Korean War was in the early '50's; the Vietnam War didn't begin till 1964!
Rating: - Fine film, but I hate that generic title
Sonny Burns (Jeremy Davies) and Gunnar Casselman (Ben Affleck) are two young men who strike up an acquaintance on their way home from the war in Korea. As students at the same high school, Sonny, the neurotic introvert, and Gunnar, the Golden Boy athlete, moved in entirely different circles. Now, following the life-changing experience of the war, this odd couple is able to provide much needed support for each other as they resist sliding back into the same old routine. Unlike Gunnar's hard-drinking, partying high school buddies, Sonny takes Gunnar's newly-found, "inner-directed" (as he calls it), philosophical side seriously. Gunnar provides vital support and advice as Sonny tries to overcome the crippling neuroses that make it so difficult for him to relate to the opposite sex and break away from his controlling parents. The entire cast is excellent, but Davies really excels as the imploding, desperate Sonny./
Rating: - A film with real depths to it
The lowdown:
Going All the Way is a touching story about learning to let go, coming to terms with yourself, love, and the power of friendship between two young men whose relationship "is the core of the movie," says MTV Award-winning music video director Mark Pellington, whose debut film shows that he clearly knows what he's doing, and that his talents can be set on more than one profession. Pellington tackles the challenge of presenting two authentic young men who we can relate to, and passes with flying colours.
Jeremy Davies is perfect for these kinds of rolls, where he plays a shy, secretive, insecure young man trapped in a boy's body, who's trying to escape his parent's domination... having played two such intriguing rolls in one year, in Going All the Way and in John Patrick Kelley's equally enchanting and moving (but ultimately a little too broody) The Locusts. And although at war with his ... Read More
Rating: - Very Insightful
This film about the friendship of two very different men was extroadinary. My hat's off to the director, Mark Pellington, he will most certainly be one of the top ten directors in Hollywood in the very near future. In fact, I think he's there already. It's a must see film.
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- Disappointing
- Fine film, but I hate that generic title
- Very Insightful
