Low Life (HD) (1995)

Ozus' World Movie Reviews 7 of 10
The title of the film should have been The Searchers. This is not a film about low lifes, but about some confused but overly educated young men who refuse to believe they are at a dead-end. They are unable to deal with how pointless their lives are and how they are wasting away in an empty environment. Some might be taken aback by the glumness of the laid-back performance of the protagonist wannabe writer. He is named John and is unsettlingly played by Rory Cochrane. That this indie film is not always on target, should not deter you from completely ignoring it...Hickenlooper uses the film to make some generalized observations of Ivy League graduates (he's a Yale grad). These spoiled young adults are labeled as typical of their generation, both in having an overblown sense of their own worth and in their inability to escape from a trashy pop culture that they scorn and love at the same time. I thought that point and other pithy observations made weren't that startling to override how the story was so bleak and unfulfilling. Yet Sean Astin's superbly moving performance nearly saves this flick, as the film's focus becomes on how John observes Andy and thereby views himself. - Dennis Schwartz
 
Variety 5 of 10
Generation X reaches a point of terminal entropy in "The Low Life." A dismal examination of post-graduate ennui among a bunch of over-educated, under-motivated L.A. bottom-feeders, George Hickenlooper's second narrative feature overflows with awkward, embarrassing and aggravating scenes, none of which is the least bit illuminating about why the characters inhabiting them are so uninteresting...Hickenlooper, whose first feature was "Grey Knight," was one of the directors of the memorable documentary "Hearts of Darkness" and, just so viewers won't miss the connection, he repeatedly and shamelessly spotlights a poster for that film on one of the character's walls herein. But on the basis of "The Low Life," Hickenlooper ought to stick to nonfiction until he finds a story worth telling and then learns how to present it coherently...The screenwriters persist in writing themselves into dramatic dead ends, forcing an abrupt close to many scenes...Continuity is a problem: John is shown going to work in a downtown L.A. high-rise, but the view from the top looks right down on the beach in Santa Monica. - Todd McCarthy