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Glengarry Glen Ross is a sort of postmodern Death of a Salesman, in which the Willy Lo-men are not angst-ridden with thoughts of spiritual redemption. Why? Because they have already sold their souls for the power of the dollar, for the careers that they willingly place before their lives and families, and for the chance to be bigger than the next guy and to cut that son of a bitch down to size. David Mamet's stage play is a searing morality tale about the dark side of the Capitalist system, where the concept of that mythical "honest dollar" is dismissed out of hand by people whose business it is to sell lies. The more the customer resists, the harder you push. The less they want your product, the more you force them to want it at any cost.

Mamet's play, set in the most miserable real estate office in the world, won itself a Pulitzer Prize for its hard-bitten depiction of morally bankrupt characters lying, cheating, and stabbing each other in the back. More importantly, it won for Mamet's ingenious reinvention of character dialogue. This is a writer whose plays, spoken in a modern tongue, are harder to perform than Shakespeare. Every stammer, every pause, every "ah", "oh", or "umm" is carefully scripted to flow with a specific cadence like a piece of music; actor improvisation is strictly forbidden. All of Mamet's plays are about the failure of language to actually communicate, the way a person can say one thing but mean another, or speak volumes but say really nothing at all. Glengarry Glen Ross (even its title is a cryptic puzzle) pushes that concept to its limit with characters whose very livelihood is based on talking in circles. They sell not a product but a dream, the false dream that a worthless piece of marsh in Florida could be a lovely retirement property or the key to financial success. They lie so well to everyone else that the inevitable result is self-delusion, in which the salesmen convince themselves that they can get ahead in the face of cutthroat competition and impossibly punishing expectations.

The film adaptation, capably directed by James Foley, captures every beat of Mamet's writing perfectly. The dream cast he assembled is one of the greatest power ensembles ever put to film. Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce and an improbably scene-stealing performance from Alec Baldwin all in one movie! The film belongs, however, to Jack Lemmon as the one-time top dog now trapped in a losing streak that brings out a frightening desperation. It's one of the actor's finest performances.

This is, in my experience, the type of movie that women hate. While I consider the film to be wickedly entertaining and brilliant in ways I can barely put to words, my wife despises it for reasons I have never fully understood. "There's not a single female character," she says as though that should be a mandatory requirement. Maybe I am reinforcing a negative stereotype; I'm sure there must be women out there somewhere who like the film, but I have yet to meet one. Men, on the other hand, seem to instantly identify with it. It must be all the testosterone in the dialogue. But man, that dialogue! Every line is a scorcher:

"I've been in this business 15 years."
"What's your name?"
"Fuck you, that's my name! You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name... And your name is ‘You're wanting.' You can't play in the man's game? You can't close them? Then go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life - Get them to sign on the line which is dotted!"

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Artisan Home Entertainment has seen fit to provide two different video transfers in this DVD release. Disc One contains a 2.35:1 letterbox version with anamorphic enhancement spread over two layers, while Disc Two has a 4:3 full-frame reformatted version. The movie was shot in the Super35 process to facilitate both aspect ratios. The 4:3 edition has more picture at the top and bottom of the screen but less on the sides; it is a boxier framing but is adequate to convey the drama. However, the movie's theatrical widescreen composition was conscientiously and artfully designed to increase the dynamic tension within each shot, and is certainly the preferred way to watch the film. I actually think that this is a case where I appreciate having both versions available for comparison, even if I will rarely ever watch the movie in full-frame.

Artisan has had a spotty track record with some of their DVD releases. The terrible video transfer on their recent Reservoir Dogs remaster had me worried for this "10 Year Anniversary Special Edition" as well. Thankfully, they seem to have gotten this one right. Glengarry Glen Ross looks very sharp and has perfect black levels, quite good colors and no distracting compression problems. I compared the letterboxed version to my older Pioneer Special Edition laserdisc, which had an excellent transfer itself. I was surprised to see how different the two looked, yet I can't pin down which one is supposedly more accurate. The LD has a more harshly contrasted image with paler flesh tones and a bluish hue to the office interior; meanwhile other colors are often more vibrantly saturated and eye-popping. This "steely" look does feel appropriate for the stylized tone of the movie. The DVD, on the other hand, is a little less contrasty and has a more subtle range of colors. The office interior is more of a soft green and flesh tones look more natural. Other colors are still vibrant when appropriate, but not as garish.

I would say that the DVD has a smoother, more film-like appearance and in direct comparison I probably prefer it. If I were to pull the laserdisc off my shelf on its own, though, I'm sure I'd be perfectly satisfied with its image as well. If one is supposed to be more accurate than the other, I am unsure which is which. They are both good in their own individual respects, and DVD- only viewers will surely find the new disc pleasing.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Both transfers of the movie have been remastered into Dolby Digital 5.1. They also contain additional Dolby Surround 2.0 tracks as well as a French dub (also in Dolby 2.0). The widescreen version has a DTS track, as if there weren't already enough good reasons to watch that one. How much does the film benefit from the 5.1 remix? This isn't a movie with much surround usage or deep bass (David Mamet is all about the dialogue), but James Newton Howard's jazzy score is nicely resolved by the DTS track. Switching back and forth between the two, I didn't detect much of any difference between the Dolby Digital and DTS. I appreciate that Artisan went to the trouble of creating a DTS track for the disc, though it really didn't need one. Dialogue is always clear and intelligible on both, and overall fidelity sounds decent considering that the mix isn't terribly dynamic. It sounds as good as it needs to, and that is all that matters.

English and Spanish subtitles are available on both versions of the movie, as is English Closed Captioning.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Its DVD release having been long delayed, Artisan finally brings Glengarry Glen Ross to the format as a modest special edition with a few halfway decent bonus features to note. Let's start by discussing what is not available. Completely missing are both of the feature- length audio commentary tracks originally produced for the Pioneer laserdisc, the first of which was from director James Foley and the second (more significantly) from Jack Lemmon. Lemmon only made two attempts at the commentary format prior to his death (the other is found on the Mister Roberts DVD); the Glengarry track was a very insightful discussion of not just this film but his entire career and the acting process.

What do we get instead? Disc One contains a selected-scenes audio commentary by James Foley. In all, he talks for only about 25 minutes as the disc seamlessly jumps to specific scenes that he wants to discuss. At the time Foley recorded his original laserdisc commentary he was still something of a hotshot young director, but these days he is pretty much a washed-up hack and has little of interest to say as he rambles aimlessly through the track.

Following this is a 30-minute video featurette called Magic Time: A Tribute to Jack Lemmon that is not nearly as interesting as it could or should have been. Lemmon's son Chris (there is no doubting that family resemblance), actor Peter Gallagher and a small handful of assorted others who worked with Lemmon over the years reminisce about his life and career. It tries valiantly to achieve poignancy, but feels perfunctory instead.

Disc Two includes another 30-minute featurette: ABC - Always Be Closing. Described as "an exploration of the facts and fictions behind Glengarry Glen Ross", this one is composed of talking-head interviews with real salesmen mixed with cast and crew trying to validate the movie's depiction of that trade. Again, it sounds fascinating and relevant in theory but is less so in execution; some parts are more interesting than others. Both this and the Jack Lemmon tribute are presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and have a contrasty, overly edge-enhanced appearance that is very hard on the eyes.

J. Roy: New and Used Furniture is apparently a very old 10-minute student film documentary of some sort. The scratchy black & white footage seems to come from sometime in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s and chronicles the training of salesmen for a flea market in a run-down town. The piece has a very melancholy tone, but I'm not entirely certain that this thing is for real or what its point is. Either this is a piece of found art for which someone had been trying to find a good DVD home, or it's a big sham placed on this disc as a joke.

Cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia, actors Alec Baldwin and Alan Arkin, and production designer Jane Mursky contribute about 20 minutes each of bonus audio commentary, again with seamless branching that jumps around the movie. Since these audio tracks are contained on Disc Two, they unfortunately play over only the 4:3 version of the film. Anchia's talk is tedious and I found myself straining to listen to the movie playing under it instead. Arkin blathers for about 6 minutes on an unrelated topic before remembering what he's there for, contributes about 5 minutes of useful information, and then has several minutes of talk that is actually repeated from his interview in one of the video featurettes. Better are Alec Baldwin, who is eager to talk not only about his own scene in the movie but about how much he admired everyone else in the cast, and Mursky, who actually has some enlightening things to say about the movie-making process, which makes her commentary the only supplement on this DVD that can take that credit.

Two Clip Archives are also available here. The first, from The Charlie Rose Show, spends about 10 minutes with Jack Lemmon talking about this movie. My favorite supplement of all, though, is the hilarious 2- minute clip from Inside the Actors Studio with Kevin Spacey, as one eager fan corners him into revisiting one of his character's scenes. Finally, finishing off the disc are some typical cast & crew bios and a few text pages of production notes.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts