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Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 2.35:1, Dolby Digital (5.1), French, Subtitled
Howard Spence's fame has enabled him to become the man he is today - a spoiled movie star, known for his rugged good looks and a checkered past of drinking and carousing. One day, on a mean drunk, he disappears from a film shoot in the Utah hills. A crazy road trip takes him as far as Butte, Montana, the last place he remembers being happy. Here, he finds the scattered remains of a family life that could have been.System Requirements:Run Time: 121 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE
"...it's possibly Wenders' most accessible film to date..." TV Guide, Ken Fox
Editor's Note
In 1984, writer Sam Shepard and director Wim Wenders teamed up for the indie hit PARIS, TEXAS, a story about family and identity, set in the American West, that won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. More than twenty years later, they're back together again for DON'T COME KNOCKING, a highly entertaining journey that examines the similar topics, with equally inspiring results. Shepard stars as Howard Spence, a former Hollywood cowboy legend whose career has fallen apart in a blur of women, drugs, and alcohol. He disappears from the set of his latest film in Moab, Utah (directed by the great George Kennedy), bent on figuring out just who he really is, so he heads home to Elko, Nevada, to see his lonely mother (Eva Marie Saint) for the first time in thirty years. Unbeknownst to him, he is being trailed by Sutter (Tim Roth), a bondsman determined to find him and bring him back to finish the $32 million movie he started. The grizzled Spence finds out that he might have a child from a fling on an old film set, so he takes off for Butte, Montana, where his past quickly catches up to him in the form of a small-town waitress (Shepard's real-life wife, Jessica Lange). As he tries to establish some kind of relationship with his son (Gabriel Mann), a musician with a bizarre girlfriend (Fairuza Balk), he is also followed by a quiet young woman (Sarah Polley) walking around with an urn. DON'T COME KNOCKING, which was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes, is another insightful, offbeat look into the American psyche by German director Wenders (WINGS OF DESIRE, UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD), gorgeously shot by cinematographer Franz Lustig, with an excellent country soundtrack produced by T Bone Burnett. Shepard is terrific as Spence, not afraid to grit his crooked teeth and bare his beat-up soul.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: French |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Sony Pictures |
| Release Date: 11/24/2009 |
| Running Time: 111 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2005 | | Catalog ID: 11722 | | UPC: 00043396117228 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Available Subtitles: French | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Cannes Film Festival (2005) | | | Wim Wenders , Nominee, Golden Palm Award |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"[V]isually majestic....DON'T COME KNOCKING is filled with haunting visual panoramas." 03/17/2006 p.E10Sight and Sound
"[N]ever less than fascinating?.[The film has] a terrific sense of place, something missing from much contemporary US cinema." 06/01/2006 p.46 Entertainment Weekly
"Director Wim Wenders' ambling tribute to American backwaters finds gems by the roadside." -- Grade: B_ 08/11/2006 p.56 Uncut
3 stars out of 5 -- "Angst has rarely looked more sumptuous." 10/01/2006 p.156 Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
Does every moment of a movie have to work for you? Or can you enjoy an imperfect one if it fills in places around the edges of your imagination? "Don't Come Knocking" is a curious film about a movie cowboy who walks off the set, goes seeking his past, and finds something that looks a lot more like a movie than the one he was making...The supporting characters are all genuine enough, but the central role of Howard Spence is a problem. He needs to be more heroic or more pathetic, I'm not sure which. His life seems to be lived outside his experience, as if someone else made all those headlines in his mother's scrapbook. - Roger Ebert
The New York Times 8 of 10
Filled with haunting visual panoramas. One of the most resonant is a nighttime shot of the Elko skyline dominated by a glittering casino. Evoking a once and future gold rush, it says more about the Old West and the New West than all of Mr. Shepard's elliptical, stagy dialogue can muster. Such powerful images make Don't Come Knocking well worth contemplating. - Stephen Holden
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