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SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

a_baron I saw this film on video when it came out, and have published two reviews about it elsewhere over the years. Having read all the other reviews of it on this site I can say only that I am astounded both that anyone should think the ending is weak, and that no one seems really to understand it at all. Though Mamet is a Jew, and may have written this with a deliberately Jewish theme, this is a film that is ultimately not about Jews at all.There are two distinct strands to "Homicide", and they come together at the end. Detective Robert Gold is on the trail of a black gangster who has not simply blood but police blood on his hands. In addition to tracking down this guy he is given the task of looking into what appears to be an attack on an influential Jewish family. Gold resents this not because they are Jews but because he has a more important task at hand, and doesn't like people higher up the food chain pulling wires to curry favour at his expense - as he sees it. However, this alleged attack is quickly linked in his mind as in other people's with the murder of a lowly, elderly shopkeeper who as well as being Jewish has a semi-secret past. When he finds a piece of paper on a rooftop, a piece of paper with a strange word written on it, he becomes convinced there is a conspiracy at work, and without realising it, becomes drawn into an entirely different conspiracy himself.Robert Gold is first and foremost a police officer, a specialist hostage negotiator, he realises at the end of the film that this rather than his ethnic or lapsed religious identity is what defines him, and that he has betrayed his own kind. Alas, he is not the only one, because the man he is hunting has been betrayed after a fashion, by his own mother. And when Gold learns the prosaic truth about the murder of the shopkeeper and the true significance of that piece of paper, he realises the extent of his own folly.Truly a masterpiece.

Rodrigo Amaro Here's a superb dramatic thriller with a very realistic focus on issues like racism, cultural and religious intolerance, and the raw side of being a policeman. In "Homicide" Joe Mantegna plays Bobby Gold, a detective over so many pressures, already on the run trying to find a cop killer (Ving Rhames) when he's called to take over a homicide case, the murder of a Jewish lady in what appears to be a robbery in her shop in a poor neighborhood. Since he was the first detective at the crime scene and the one who reported the incident, he's told by his bosses to forget about the other case and keep working on this one; besides these facts he's also Jewish but a non practicant one. As one of those strange twists of fate, the reluctant Bobby will confront himself in his own way of thinking about his religion which he always neglected for seeing himself as part of something weak; and he also enters in conflict with his self and his views of his work during the course of both investigations, which affects his whole way of seeing things how they really are. Writer and director David Mamet manages to skillfully pull the strings of so many backgrounds and worlds without downplaying situations or disappointing the viewers. Everything works in a perfect tense mood; the pieces are well connected and the ability of surprising the audience is incredibly well done but it only works if the viewers fully understand the movie's premise and the real message behind the case rather than only paying attention to the investigations and the action scenes. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Bobby meets a Rabbi who fears more of his badge than his gun, and he reveals what Bobby really is, in being born as Jew but who can't read words in Hebrew; the turning point for the detective to see what he really is. Mantegna comes with one of his best performances as the hard working detective who at the end of the film realizes how insignificant his instincts were, since he end up betrayed by himself for not seeing that the whole missing piece in this crime puzzle was already in front of him. Also here with a great performance is William H. Macy, playing Mantegna's tough partner. There's so much to be said about "Homicide" but it's better not or I'll spoil the amazing surprises this movie has. 10/10

Thorkell A Ottarsson I just saw Homicide for the first time and I was quite impressed. It is very much a Mamet film, film about men and their world, with a setting that fits a B film but a deeper message that reaches (and sometimes over reaches) for the stars. I often find my self thinking, why is this man, this talent picking this subject when he wants to make something profound and beautiful? But then you just can't take your eyes of the professionalism and you find your self being dragged into an ultra masculine world full of shallow and surprisingly deep meanings, side by side.Homicide is one of his deeper films but it is impossible to talk about why it is good without revealing the end of the film, so SPOILERS! There are not many films about a detective who does not solve the case, who starts running in the wrong direction and looses him self on the way. That alone is praiseworthy. What is even rarer is to find a film that manages to make that mean something, give that a deeper meaning. I believe the film is quite postmodern. We can't look for the truth without taking some of our self into that search. Sometimes it just colors our conclusions but at other times it takes us into the wrong direction. Here is a hero looking for a self identity and he mixes that up into the case and gets the wrong answers. The word he was looking for had nothing to do with the case. It was just pigeon seeds. No conspiracy, nothing. Just like everyone told him, someone desperate looking for money. The scary thing is that we all do this, every single day of the year. When we listen to the news, when we justify our actions, when we help our friends. We filter what we hear and see through what we know and hold dear. What comes out is never the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It might resemble the truth, if we are lucky! END OF SPOILERS!!!This film is not without faults. It feels like a stage play at times. You can feel that Mamet has not managed to lave the theatre behind even though the film is quite visual. The problem is the acting. It is not bad, it's just not film acting, if you get my drift.

Robert Yuna This movie is a class in movie-making 101, even on the cheap. Mamet shows what a great film you can write and produce with the most basic of sets. Half a dozen great stage and movie actors and excellent and basic staging.Mamet's writing style is poetry. At times, it is like watching something between an opera, a ballet and a Baptist church service. The call and response style to Mamet's writing is simple, pure and elegant. Mamet's cast of regular actors, also notably seen in "House Of Games" is superb.The original, sparse music adds a nearly documentary feel to the film. You can still find this in the "used" internet movie web sites on VHS for a buck and a half. THis is a great film and a great teaching film for aspiring film writers and directors.