Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Monkeywess This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Mr-Fusion "American Gigolo" is not a particularly taut thriller, but it's got that tawdry early '80s vibe going strong. The real selling point of this movie is its star. Plenty of screen time is spent ogling Gere's well- appointed living space, car, dress, and impressive physique. The role of Julian Kay required physical discipline, and Gere's got it in spades. Plus that's a million dollar swagger. The rest of the time is spent watching Gere stress over who's trying to frame him for murder, with cop Elizondo on his tail. And all of this against the background noise of Moroder's tacky synth score (which is constantly reminding us that there's a song called "Call Me" by Blondie). And in the end, Gere had to be dismantled to find true love. But that road wasn't a very fun journey. 5/10

tomsview "American Gigolo" is a character study wrapped around a murder mystery with neither aspect particularly satisfying.The story is centred on Julian Kaye, a high price male escort played by Richard Gere whose specialty is pleasing middle-aged women. Julian's clients are supplied by two contacts including a pimp named Leon. Julian takes a break from the middle-aged women for an extra-curricular affair with Michelle Stratton, played by Lauren Hutton, the wife of a prominent senator.When Leon arranges for Julian to provide a service for a client who wants to watch Julian make love to his wife, she is found murdered after his visit. A policeman, detective Sunday, played by Hector Elizondo, investigates Julian who receives no help from his other clients who could provide him with an alibi.Although this is one of Richard Gere's most important early movies, it suffers from the fact that none of the characters are particularly engaging – including Julian. For a man who supposedly makes his living providing stimulation to rich, middle-aged women, Julian seems remarkably devoid of charisma. We do not see very much actual gigoloing, which is probably just as well because Julian is so into himself and his clothes that the first five minutes of lovemaking would probably involve him finding a padded coat hanger for his jacket, folding his trousers and laying out fresh underwear to put on when he was finished.In the early part of his career, Richard Gere had a tendency to use too much "method" at unexpected moments. The scene where he destroys his apartment and his car looking for planted evidence is over-the-top and distracting. If it were a metaphor for dissatisfaction with his life it would be almost acceptable, but he shows little conscience about his parasitic lifestyle at any other time in the movie.Hector Elizondo's cigar chomping detective is a strange creation. At one point, after Julian criticises his dress sense, he turns up at the precinct in a snappy new suit. Although he seems sympathetic to Julian, he disappears from the story before this aspect is fully explored.The electronic score by Gorgio Moroder is the classic sound of the late 70's when symphonic scores for this kind of film had all but disappeared. His score for "American Gigolo" dates the movie far more than the full hairstyles, checked pants and hatchbacks speeding along the freeway.The fragmented last half-hour of "American Gigolo" caps an already flabby movie. When Michelle Stratton provides Julian not only with an alibi, but also true love, you feel that the filmmakers clutched at this ending. To have worked, there needed to be some growth in Julian's character. The audience is left with the feeling that Julian would not have made the same kind of sacrifice for Michelle. It is this emptiness at its centre that is the defining quality of "American Gigolo".

Desertman84 A slick Los Angeles call boy finds love and redemption in Paul Schrader's ultra-stylish drama entitled American Gigolo.It stars Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton together with Hector Elizondo,Nina Van Pallandt and Bill Duke.Julian Kaye is a male escort in Los Angeles whose job supports his expensive taste in cars, stereophonic equipment, cocaine and clothes. He is, at times, blatantly narcissistic and superficial; however, he claims to take some pleasure in his work from being able to sexually satisfy women.When on an assignment for his primary procuress, Anne, he meets Michelle Stratton, the unhappy wife of a local politician, who becomes interested in him. Julian's other pimp, Leon, sends him to the house of a financier, Mr. Rheiman, who asks Julian to physically abuse and have sex with his wife while he watches them.As Julian begins to get to know Michelle, he learns that the financier's wife, Mrs. Rheiman, was murdered. Los Angeles Police Department Detective Sunday investigates Julian as a primary suspect. Though he was with a client, Lisa Williams, on the night of the murder, the client refuses to give Julian an alibi in order to protect her and her husband's reputations.As Julian's relationship with Michelle deepens, suspicion of the murder mounts against him. He soon realizes that he is being framed and grows increasingly desperate. His mounting anguish is visually represented by a degeneration in style as his clothes become rumpled, he goes unshaven, and he even rents a cheap commuter car after his Mercedes SL has been tampered with.Julian finally confronts Leon, who confesses that one of the other, younger gigolos who works for him had killed the wealthy man's wife, and Leon had conceived the plan to frame Julian. After an argument, Julian accidentally pushes Leon over the apartment balcony and he falls to his death.With no one to help him, Julian ends up in jail, awaiting trial for the murder. However, when all seems lost, Michelle risks her reputation and that of her husband to provide Julian with the alibi that can save him from prison.Stylish but emotionally hollow, Paul Schrader's morality tale of a call boy, offers some visual pleasures.Mixing his admiration for European art cinema with a voyeuristic view of the seamier side of sex and affluence, Schrader renders Julian an inscrutable, emotionally disengaged purveyor of pleasure, decked out in Giorgio Armani clothes coordinated with Ferdinando Scarfiotti's meticulous production design. Amid critical doubts about its artiness and distanced eroticism, it surprised everyone by not dying on the box office vine. With some audiences reportedly showing up for repeat viewings of Gere's seductive charms, it became a moderate hit, turning Gere into a star and Armani into the new fashion sensation. Whatever reservations one may have about the movie, it provided two indelible images of 1980's decadence to come: Gere's perusing his "artist's palette" of shirts, ties, and jackets, and Gere's cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in his convertible to the New Wave strains of Blondie's "Call Me".

James Hitchcock With the decline of the moralistic Production Code, female prostitutes began to appear in films from the early sixties like "Irma la Douce" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's", although they generally fitted that old literary archetype of the "tart with a heart", and by the end of the decade we had, in "Midnight Cowboy", a mainstream film dealing with the subject of male prostitution. "American Gigolo", made in 1980, is another on the same controversial theme. Julian Kaye is a heterosexual male prostitute working in Los Angeles who makes his living having sex with wealthy women for money. It is evidently a job which pays well as he lives in an upmarket apartment, drives a Mercedes SL, wears clothes by Armani and has expensive tastes in hi-fi equipment. Julian, however, is a tart without a heart; he is a selfish and superficial man who lacks any affection for the women he sleeps with, seeing them only as a source of income, until he meets Michelle Stratton, the unhappily married wife of a rising politician. Michelle becomes a regular client and begins to develop deeper feelings for him. Julian learns that another of his clients, the wife of a wealthy financier, has been murdered. To make matters worse, the police regard him as a prime suspect and he is unable to provide an alibi. He realises that he is being framed to protect the real murderer and is forced to go on the run to discover who is responsible. The theme of a man wrongly accused of a crime is a familiar thriller trope; it frequently occurs, for example, in the works of Alfred Hitchcock. "American Gigolo", however, is quite different in style to any of Hitchcock's films. It is sometimes regarded as the second installment of Paul Schrader's "lonely man" trilogy, following "Taxi Driver" for which Schrader wrote the script but was directed by Martin Scorsese, and preceding "Light Sleeper" which, like "American Gigolo", was both written and directed by Schrader. I have never seen "Light Sleeper", but there are certainly parallels between "American Gigolo" and "Taxi Driver". Both have prostitution as a central theme and both have a main character who is a loner, despite the obvious differences between Richard Gere's affluent, dandyish Julian and Robert de Niro's seedy working-class loser Travis Bickle. Like Bickle, Julian is cold and emotionally detached, and both films similarly take a cold-eyed, detached view of their subject-matter. Julian may be the victim of undeserved suspicion, but Schrader never evokes sympathy for him in the way that Hitchcock probably would. (Hitchcock generally intended the audience to identify emotionally with the heroes of his "man unjustly accused" films like Cary Grant in "North by North-West" or Henry Fonda in "The Wrong Man"; "Frenzy" is perhaps an exception). Julian is too cold and self-obsessed to claim our sympathy; there is a sense that he has earned his living in an immoral way and paid the price, that he has played with fire and got burnt after coming up against people more vicious than he is. At the end of the film he is only saved by a false alibi- he has learned to fight fire with fire and lies with more lies, an ironic ending which, I suspect, would not have appealed to Hitchcock. The film is very much of its time, celebrating the contemporary styles of the late seventies and early eighties, represented by Julian's car, clothes and tastes in interior decoration. (This impression is strengthened by the use of the pop music of the era, such as Blondie's "Call Me", on the soundtrack). As the film progresses, however, the outward symbols of his sleazy success seem to drop away; previously immaculately dressed, he now appears unkempt and unshaven and is seen driving a cheap rented car. Gere was not the first choice for the role of Julian- that was, apparently, John Travolta- but he made the part his own. As in a number of his best films- other examples include "An Officer and A Gentleman", "No Mercy" and "Chicago"- Gere's performance is characterised by a certain self-confident swagger bordering on arrogance. (The same is to some extent true of "Pretty Woman", but there Edward's outward swagger hides inner uncertainties and self-doubt). Lauren Hutton is also good as Michelle who has to choose between her growing feelings for Julian on the one hand and her husband 's political career and her own reputation on the other."American Gigolo" is in form a thriller, but seen purely as such it is not altogether a success. There is insufficient tension, the emotional temperature is too cool and the ending is unclear. Where it does succeed is as a cool, stylish look at the underside of American society in the early eighties. 7/10