Last Exit to Brooklyn
Tags: realism

Plot synopsis:
The stories are set almost entirely in what is now considered the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn; the location is widely misreported as Red Hook, where one story is set and parts of the 1989 movie were filmed. Last Exit to Brooklyn is divided into six parts that can, more or less, be read separately. Each part is prefaced with a passage from the Bible.
Another Day, Another Dollar: A gang of young Brooklyn hoodlums hang around an all-night cafe and get into a vicious fight with a group of US Army soldiers on leave.
The Queen Is Dead: Georgette, a sassy transvestite hooker, is thrown out of the family home by her brother and tries to attract the attention of a hoodlum named Vinnie at a benzedrine-driven party.
And Baby Makes Three: An alcoholic father tries to keep good spirits and maintain his family’s marriage traditions after his daughter becomes pregnant and then marries Tommy, a motorcycle mechanic.
Tralala: The title character of an earlier Selby short story, she is a young Brooklyn prostitute who makes a living propositioning sailors in bars and stealing their money. In perhaps the novel’s most notorious scene, she is brutally gang-raped after a night of heavy drinking.
Strike: Harry, a machinist in a factory, becomes a local official in the union. A closeted homosexual, he abuses his wife, molests his infant son, and gets in fights to convince himself that he is a man. He gains a temporary status and importance during a long strike, and uses the union's money to entertain the young street punks and buy the company of drag queens.
Landsend: Described as a "coda" for the book, this section presents the intertwined, yet ordinary day of numerous denizens in a housing project.

Review: Those are qualities present in Selby's book and it would have been a shame for the filmmakers to abandon them, just as it would have been a shame for Aronofsky to cave to the pressures to find a happier ending for his film of Requiem...As a reader of the book I think those negative comments are even more misguided, because the screenwriter did quite a bit to try to make the material more accessible for the viewing audience.
The book doesn't end on the relief of the end of the strike, but finishes with an amazing coda that contains characters like Abraham, a man who spends money on clothes and his car but won't cough up to buy vitamins for his malnourished children.My one big complaint about the screenplay was the treatment of Harry Black's character.
I think his descent is more credible in the book, but Selby was also able to get inside Harry's head on paper in a way that's difficult to translate into film.Overall I think this film is a very excellent adaptation of extremely difficult material, and I recommend it to anyone who is willing to watch a story about the pain and suffering that happens in everyday life without the Hollywood gloss..
I believe its a superior adaptation.The film is based around a union strike which threatens to cripple the city of Brooklyn in the 1950s.
The film focuses several characters; Harry, the troubled union leader struggling to come to terms with his desires for other men and his  gender-bending lover against the anger, aggression and hypocrisy of  the era; a woman, TraLaLa, who sells her body for money but finds herself committing the ultimate crime of her profession by falling for a client - an army man destined to hurt her; a family with a daughter pregnant out of wedlock; a gang of aimless young men hungry  for trouble; and a young teen looking for love in TraLaLa.Its a film full of fascinating performances which reinforce the greatness of this film.
Ricki Lake, Sam Rockwell and Stephen lang also excel in a great ensemble film.I can still picture vividly the majesty and intensity of the strike  riot and the water spraying at the wire fence as strikers confront the police.There are many great scenes such as this which combined with striking performances and an unflinching script and score make Last Exit to Brooklyn a modern masterpiece.
It truly is the opposite of Pleasantville.Hubert Selby's dark vision of the common man is woven around several characters in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
When the envelope turns out to contain a lengthy love letter she doesn't become angry or disappointed, just confused.In addition to Leigh and Young, powerful performances are turned in by Jerry Orbach (the corrupt union boss), Stephen Lang (the closet homosexual strike-line foreman), Stephen Baldwin (a street punk), Ricki Lake (Big Joe's very pregnant daughter), and Alexis Arquette (the teen-age transvestite).The soundtrack is excellent and unobtrusive and Uli Edel's direction insightful.
Working class life in 1950's Brooklyn is disrupted by a strike.One of these films that seems about nothing in the explaining (the ups and downs of the roughhouse working-class), but is a very powerful piece in the watching and highly recommended.The film reminded me of an X rated version of American Graffiti where people go about their ordinary lives, but somehow, we become fascinated.
Certain scenes actually play no real role in the plot, but add to the feel of time and place.A lot of people will be shocked by this movie.
I found it quite hard to watch at times myself, but I think it is an important film and no insult to the classic Selby book which inspired it..
In 1952, a panoramic view of the other side of North America is presented through the life of different characters and their dramatic stories, having Brooklyn in common.
This sad, depressive and violent movie is another great work of Uli Edel, mainly known by `Christiane F'.
The author of the book this movie was based on said himself he thought this was one great adaptation of his novel.
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) is based on the book by Hubert Selby Jr. about a group of working class during a labour strike in early 1950's in the gritty streets of Brooklyn.
Stephen Lang plays Harry Black, the leader of the strike unit and Jennifer Jason Leigh is Tralala, a lost soul who works as a hooker for the various soldiers and other drunken males that use the services of the hookers drinking beer and acting dirty.
Just watching Harry's eyes when he first sees his new interest in the street shows how powerful cinema can be without one single word.Another important character is of course Tralala and she is also involved in the film's harrowing and almost unbearably sadistic and ugly end scene that finally (or what happens after that) makes the film a very strong experience.
The sets are very impressive and the atmosphere in this film is all the time like the actors could any minute start singing and dancing their lines!
What they tried to express through screaming and horrible noise should have been done more aesthetically and with the tools of the art and much more effectively.Last Exit to Brooklyn is a powerful, challenging and at the end, beautiful film about the most important and universal things in life and about humanity, and it is also a great film visually.
Which leads to the boys friends brutally beating Harry to the point where he was within an inch of his life from being dead and ending up being literally crucified in an empty back-lot; This is the level of brutality in this movie.
A violent brutal and at the same time shockingly honest movie about life in Brooklyn New York circa 1952.
With Jerry Orbach as the feisty and two fisted union president who sticks to his guns and in the end gets what he wants for himself and his union members and many many more good actors and the parts that they play in the movie."Last Exit to Brooklyn" is a very hard movie to watch but if you want a film with brutal realism and fine acting and photography as well as a story that will grip you right from the start and hold on to you long after the movie is over this is it..
None of us lived in the streets like the characters in the film but the violence from there was definitely reflected in our day to day life.
Heartwrenchingly faithful to the mood and sentiment of Hubert Selby's important novel I am continuously surprised at how films like this are overlooked in a larger, classic sense.
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Tralala, a hooker WITHOUT a heart of gold (for a change) and Burt Young as a union hard hitter coming to terms with his sexuality are most notably inspiring.
The picture of an innocent 1950s promulgated by films of the time was thoroughly refuted with the book Last Exit to Brooklyn, which portrayed a world of sex and violence that would ring just as true if written about the present age.
There are some memorable scenes, and Jennifer Jason Leigh gives yet another memorable performance mixing, as usual, intense character and clothes removal.I didn't think it was a great movie, but if I were more prone to dark, hopeless movies, as I was when younger, perhaps I would think so.
The story operates on the same level as many Selby stories do, of characters so devoid of faith or hope that they don't recognize how close they are to having what they want or just appreciating the potential in what they have, and that mistake causes their undoing (in Stephen Lang's case) or their uncovered possibilities of grace (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Mark Knopfler's beautiful and melancholy score paints a haunting and pained picture, over this, an extremely hard-hitting drama, superbly directed by Uli Edel.For 1989, its release date and set around Brooklyn in the 1952, this is as strong as films got.
There's a sense of brooding beauty about it, in the same way that West Side Story had flawed characters, in so many conflicts, within their own community and incomers, such as military servicemen, at night, looking for a great time.
Maybe cos it has a heart; a survivoral instinct that's most apparent in the Italian families in the film, headed by Burt Young, who of course played Paulie, Rocky Balboa's wheezing training aide, in the Rocky movies.My Universal release has a fine transfer and is quite cheap, especially secondhand.
Classic films like Last Exit To Brooklyn stay in ones mind forever.
Hubert Selby, Jr's controversial novel Last Exit to Brooklyn is a classic and is transferred to the big screen brilliantly by underrated German director Uli Edel.
The acting is first rate, with Jennifer Jason Leigh (brilliant as usual) and Stephen Lang (now a cast member of the biggest grossing film in Hollywood history!) taking all the plaudits respectively as Tralala, the hooker with a hart of ice, money is all she knows and cares for; and Harry Black, the repressed homosexual leader of the strike.
Factory workers on-strike in Brooklyn, 1952 have nothing to do at night but get into trouble: the head of the strike office is leading a double life (he's married with a child, but is attracted to the drag queens who gather in an apartment in the neighborhood), his dumb-lugs friends beat up on servicemen, a platinum-haired tramp sets up horny soldiers to be rolled, and uncouth family man Big Joe (who urinates out the window when he can't get into the bathroom at home) discovers his daughter isn't just fat--she's pregnant.
There's the head manager of the plant, Stephen Lang, great, a married man, who can't come out of the closet, his last tragic scene, one of the most memorable in the film.
Since this film, Stephen Lang seems to have improved his image, at least playing the Godly "Stonewall" Jackson in "Gods and Generals." Lang's role here is just the opposite: perhaps the worst trashy person in the film and a character who falls in love with a transvestite by the end of the film.Depressing, gloomy, semi-pornographic, repulsive: these are just a few of the adjectives people used - even some Liberal critics - in describing this story, which is painted even worse in the novel.
The characters are "true-to-life", the acting so convincing you begin to feel their emotions, the directing as if by the author of the book himself, and the cinematography to linger in your mind long after watching it.
Uli Edel ('Christiane F.') directed this adaption of Hubert Selby Jr.'s classic collection of intersected short-stories set in Brooklyn in the early Fifties...The film, which as Darren Aronofsky's recent 'Requiem for a Dream', captures Selby's harsh worldview- and his compassion for his characters no matter how low they sink...The film takes the separate stories, 'Another Day, Another Dollar', 'The Queen is Dead', 'Strike', 'Tralala' et al and weaves them together.
This manages to yoke the disparate elements together in a cohesive whole (though an approach similar to Kieslowski's 'Dekalog'- where characters from other episodes appear in the background- would have been interesting)...This film is harsh, the previous comments on 'Last Exit' seem to be shocked at the film's content- what did the viewer think a film by the director of 'Christiane F' of a novel by Hubert Selby Jr. would be like????...To believe that Georgette would be mourned by his/her friends- they aren't friends- they just occupy the same zone...And to complain there is no end- well, it's simple- there is no end for the occupants of this slum.
This film, as the book doesn't intend to give closure; it is not entertainment...The performances are great- Stephen Lang and Jennifer Jason Leigh especially (note also a cameo by Hubert Selby Jr. as the taxi driver who runs over Georgette- he also cameos as a prison guard taunting Tyrone in 'Requiem for a Dream').
The performances are very good, Selbys story is beyond excellent and is faultlessly executed, Everything about this film is spot-on but, somehow, it failed to draw me in to the point where I could get any empathy with the characters.
this is a raw version of what is out in the real world.Excellent version of true street dramas.Powerful cast.True classic.A must have for your collection.Its touches parts of life that people don't like to talk about.Harry the union rep,i think is the most animated role in this movie.His love for the union and his desire for cross dressing men is sad prison of his life.Not knowing who he is or what he wants.Set in the blue collared steel mill town of Brooklyn ,not much money,no work,no direction for the towns younger adults.Bordem becomes a way life.The problem is which exit and when do they take it.There is no second chance .Your exit could be the last.
Hubert Selby Jr. gave us the book "Requiem For A Dream" and co-wrote the screenplay to Aronofsky's movie of it.
"Last Exit To Brooklyn" still has the vice and the multiple characters living sad lives, but it hardly does them the same justice Aronofsky did.The film seems laughably anti-gay at times.
Who'd have thought a drama about Brooklyners would feature action sequences and truck explosions?The director, Uli Edel has a skill level like that of a TV director, but he is far below the cut for real movies.
I recently read a review on this film that stated the lack of closure Edel offered for the film's central characters was evidence of his failure to make good film for the sake of being "artistic" and stood for this movie being nothing more than a "depressing piece of sludge".
Sometimes a strong warning can be the best recommendation for a difficult movie, and here's a perfect example: beginning with a vicious back alley beating of a wayward sailor and ending, 100 minutes later, with a marathon gang rape of drunken whore Jennifer Jason Leigh.
My reaction was not shock or horror, it was: "Here we go again." There is some semblance of a story in between the scenes of violence, but two thirds of the way through the film I had switched off completely, and couldn't wait for the end.If this is the best the film makers can do, they should find something else to do with their miserable lives, like making shoes or delivering mail..
Great Book, Good Movie.
There are a lot of really wonderful and talented actors in this film and they all do a good job but over all this movie pales in comparison to the book it is based on.
Good movie with great performances but it doesn't compare to the book..
'Last Exit to Brooklyn' is an icon of a film which I strongly recommend as one of the most special films one could ever hope to watch.It is a brilliant adaption of the controversial book of interconnected stories depicting low life in 1950's Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr., which was the subject of an obscenity prosecution at the Old Bailey in London in the 60's.
If we were to consider a movie as a long line of pretty images, then the creation known as "Last exit to Brooklyn" is by far more than that.
I'm sure that I was affected by seeing Requeim for a Dream before this film, as it annoyed me to what extent the story is manipulated and plotted to allow each of it's characters to have the most horrible and distressing endings possible.
No wonder Edel is a TV director; this movie looks and feels like a bad "made for TV" flick.
The thing that bothered me most about the film was the fact it had not one likable character.The acting was terrible, Stephen Lang is laughable in his part as a gooky eyed union leader who finds out he wants the same sex so much that he acts like a pathetic loser, trying desperately to be with a stuck up, snotty nosed, superficial, vampire looking gay man, all the while neglecting his child and wife.The film fails BIG time because I actually despised the douche bags on strike, and cared not one bit when they finally get work at the end of the film.Jennifer Jason Leigh is detestable as a sleaze bag of a hooker who robs naive Naval men while they are drunk.We have 'Uncle Pauly' from Rocky playing the same role here, a fat, foul mouthed, rude, unlikeable greasy buffoon.There's also a role played by a Baldwin brother who I cant stand.Need I go on?
I don't know much about film-making, but good movies have to tell some sort of a story...your characters have to start and complete their journey.
The whole book is about the prostitute who sure isn't described looking like the beautiful Jennifer J Leigh.
My true fascination is the social community, and this lured me into watching the film Last exit to Brooklyn.
This is the film version of Hubert Selby Jr.'s unrelentingly pessimistic 1964 novel "Last Exit to Brooklyn".
There are many great sub-plots, and performances; but, mainly, the film focuses on the character stories involving beautiful young prostitute Jennifer Jason Leigh (as Tral), and striking bisexual union leader Stephen Lang (as Harry Black).Writer Selby has said, "Sometimes, we have the absolute certainty that there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that, if we ever search it out, we won't be able to stand looking at it.
Its shocking content must have put off a lot of viewers, at the time; yet, "Last Exit to Brooklyn" succeeds because its violence is not mindless.********* Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) Uli Edel ~ Stephen Lang, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Peter Dobson, Cameron Johann