Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Year Released: 1979
Rating: 3.0
Ben Gazzara completely and totally embodies the main character, Saint Jack, an American expatriate living in Singapore who runs a brothel and does so without an ounce of guilt. He's essentially a good, honest man, who understands the human condition and accepts it; when he's tortured in a crafty way by a group of malcontents who oppose the success he's having in the "sex" business, he laughs it off later, probably because he realizes how funny it is (or how funny and sad). There's no genuine plot to speak of (aside from a blackmailing side plot that surfaces towards the end): it's all about Gazzara and the perfectly captured, sweaty Singapore (the cinematographer was Robby Müller, who shot von Trier's Breaking the Waves). Some sags in the middle slow the picture down - cutting it a bit would make for a tighter picture - but even during the lulls the dialogue is crisp and atmosphere intriguing. If this isn't the performance of Gazzara's career, I don't know what is.
