Despite having written some of Hollywood's most engaging films (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Cat People), Paul Schrader now takes the director's seat for 1980's drama, "American Gigolo". The film is a slow (very slow at times) paced drama about a young "scort service" man played by a very young Richard Gere, who gets framed in the brutal murder of one of his ex clients and wife to a Palm Springs millionaire. The life of Julian Kay (Richard Gere) is simple: he gives satisfaction to L.A's lonely and rich Hollywood wives while being handsomely paid for it. From the start, I assume something will eventually go wrong. Julian always keeps a distance from his customers by never getting "too involved" in any way with them. One day he gets a call from an old "friend" who begs him to take a job in Palm Springs; a rich couple into kinky and rough sex, with the husband on the peeping Tom side. The husband asks Julian to handcuff his wife and take her from behind and beat her, to which I assume Julian reluctantly obliges before the scene fades out. Soon after it's all over the news that the kinky wife is found murdered and Julian becomes the prime suspect. All this happens as Julian slowly develops a relationship with his new client, Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton), the wife of an up and rising politician. Michelle begins to fall in love with Julian, and he struggles to avoid falling in love too with her."American Gigolo" has a lot going for it, starting with the rousing Blondie hit, "Call Me", which remains as the musical theme throughout the movie. What kills this movie is its decidedly slow pace and bland acting from the young Gere. We know he is a lonely man, doing what does best to get by, but not necessarily liking all of it. When he gets framed for murder, little do we know the reasons behind it and little explanation is given to the audience. The reasons behind Julian's friend Leon (William Duke, from "Predator"), turning on him are really never addressed, except that he was "frameable", which isn't saying much. All we know is that Mrs. Stratton's husband is behind the framing, which is weird, coming from a man who knows before hand his wife cheats on him and doesn't seem to care (on the outside).With all the Hollywood reboots and rehashes going on today, a film like this one could easily be improved upon, perhaps making Julian's past (which we know little from other characters) a bit darker. With "Gigolo" in its title, you'd expect more sex and even by 1980's standards, the sex is pretty restrained. All in all, "American Gigolo" will be best remembered as an early Richard Gere vehicle and the film that featured Blondie's last, enduring hit single, "Call Me".

"American Gigolo" has a sleek, smooth, shiny surface - it's one of those movies which stylistically heralded the arrival of a new cinematic decade, the 1980s. But the murder plot is rather weak, and the insights are mostly shallow ("money doesn't equal happiness, but true love does"). Giorgio Moroder's trend-setting score (including the classic "Call Me") is a definite asset, and Richard Gere is ideally cast in the title role - not so much physically (I'll let the ladies decide that), but for his swagger. **1/2 out of 4.

I first saw this movie in 1981 when I was 20 years old. At that time I didn't know anything about this particular profession of Gigolo. You could become a contractor or a teacher or a lawyer, but a Gigolo was nowhere in the list of choices of a profession.Last summer I watched "American Gigolo" again. Beautiful role play of Richard Gere who plays the Gigolo Julian. Julian is very successful and his two employers (Leroy and Anne) cannot stand his prosperity. This leads to jealousy.Leroy is a criminal, a drugs dealer and a pimp who doesn't care about people just about their money. He has been asked to mislead the police in the murder case of Julie Ryman. She is the wife of the famous investor Arnold Ryman.Investors like Ryman need to be in close contact with politicians to get lucrative orders from. It happens that the woman of one of that politicians named Rick is a client of Julian. So the scene is complete and Ryman and Rick need somebody to do the 'dirty job' (misleading the police).Although the movie has been made 35 years ago, it is an exiting detective with a lot of romance in it. I love that combination supplied with a good story and fancy cars. And I recognized lots of the location where the movie was recorded, because I had a Gigolo job to do in Los Angeles myself at Valentine's Day.

Giorgio Moroder's signature synths followed by Deborah Harry's instantly recognisable new wave classic, Call Me, opens up American Gigolo as we see a pretty suave 80s Richard Gere in a black Cadilliac driving along the beachside. Gere has all the trappings of a wealthy 80s lifestyle so usually romanticised in a Bruckheimer production but the film establishes in its first few scenes that Gere is pretty much a buck for hire with little sway over his Aryan madam. This form of bait and switch appears throughout the movie, with Gere appearing in control and pretty cool at first and then as a total whore. The dichotomy between these two personas plays a big part of the film's plot as Julian K., Gere, becomes entangled in a murder investigation of a trick who is the wife to a wealthy S&M aficionado and learns that he should question the many friendships he's procured during his career as a loverboy. Lauren Hutton plays a random woman that Gere meets and develops into the film's love interest after one of the most minimalist sex scenes in an 80s film. The set production, music, acting and story is all very connotative of the eighties. Apartments are gray or salmon coloured with minimalist artwork and expensive vases and silver blocky stereo systems - it's clear with some scenes, including one where Gere hangs upside down to do some crunches, that the set design heavily influenced the mise-en-scene of Mary Harron's adaptation of American Psycho. Moroder's various compositions of Blondie's Call Me highlight the continuing descent of Julian k. as the chorus becomes more melancholic and ominous - it's all very suspenseful from an eighties perspective. Some may find the final scenes slightly ridiculous and most likely unrealistic, but one should remember that American Gigolo was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and even on the tail end of New Hollywood, the film does show caution in its dark themes as not to alienate mainstream audiences. I definitely felt the material was pretty subdued for a film written and directed by Taxi Driver's Paul Schrader. However, it doesn't matter as the film is effective as a time capsule of the seedier side of the eighties.