Not a film for everyone, but the unrelieved squalor of BARFLY offers its own peculiar fascinations. Director Barbet Schroeder (REVERSAL OF FORTUNE) positions the grungy world of cult writer Charles Bukowski under a cinematic microscope, affording titillating glimpses of lowlife.
Rourke plays Henry Chinaski, a slovenly, hard-drinking, fistfighting scribe who's taken with Wanda Wilcox (Dunaway), a haggard but attractive drunk he meets in a bar. Chinaski's work is admired by wealthy, pretty, self-assured publisher Tully Sorenson (Krige), and that provides the film with a
romantic triangle as Wanda and Tully battle for Henry's attentions. Rourke, who turns in the fi...
Released:
1987
Rated:
R
Length:
100 mins