American Buffalo (1996)

This is an adaptation of David Mamet's classic play about the American dream and two guys in a room yelling "frick" at each other.

If you're never going to see it on stage, you should watch this. Mamet has a way of letting these angry frustrated people explain themselves in dialogue that's actually the way angry frustrated people talk.

But going from stage to screen you really lose a heck of a lot. I saw it once in a small theater where there's two sweaty old bums screaming at each other about 5ft away from my face about to get in a fight. You don't get the same emotional experience from a tv screen.

What's even worse is the director just does everything in the laziest way possible. A says a line, cut to B saying a line. The problem is this breaks up the timing as on stage a lot of these lines would be really fast or overlapping. He would have done way better finding a place to put the camera where both guys are in the shot and let it roll for a while.