Three buddies going way back adjust to the sudden death, by heart attack, of a fourth, and it ain't pretty. "People die of tensions -- that's all they die of," opines the earthy character played by Peter Falk, and we wish to hear more of his speaking from the heart. However, members of this macho, posturing triumverate hardly mention their departed friend at all. Instead, we observe all manner of acting out, from drinking too much, yelling at each other and at women, acting impulsively, throwing money around, and being unpredictable. "At 27, men realize they are not going to be a professional athlete," one of the buddies says along the way. "You reach 30 and realize it's over." Er, OK. For the rest of the movie, we watch these boy-men try to forget that time stops for no tide. Many of the principals and tangential characters giggle uncontrollably -- not that anything is very funny here -- and one wonders if usually creative director John Cassavetes, famous for his cinema-verite style of filmmaking, is stalling for time, trying to figure out what should come next. The three main characters, played by Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, and Falk, look a lot alike, especially at the beginning, and it's hard for a while to keep the characters straight. One thing is clear, though, and that is that the men are lost, lost, lost. On the outside they look like professionally successful family men. At a closer glance, we see that they are deeply alienated, and completely incapable of having an authentic interaction with another human being. The unseen tragedy of their friend's passing causes them to question everything -- to the point of going to bed with none-too-appealing strangers in London -- and when the shock subsides, things go back almost to the way they were before. A pretty sorry picture of American domesticity.

Let me start by saying that Cassavetes is a brilliant director. Only sometimes, brilliance coupled with a bold desire to take risks can end up landing on its derriere, especially if it happens after a success such as 'Faces'. And that is exactly what 'Husbands' does. The story is quite weak, the resolution is obscure, and all we're left with is watching three guys get drunk and being nasty. Who cares? I certainly don't. There's nothing to root for here, nobody to sympathize with. Some will argue that this is simply Cassavetes' style and a pseudo-sequel to 'Faces'. But the lower budget 'Faces', as stretched out and not plot driven as it was, was considerably more effective in how it put across interesting characters and showed a slice of life. 'Husbands' by comparison shows a bunch of aimless characters with dialog that stretches the realms of how most people talk and act. That's not to say that Husbands doesn't have some interesting moments. For students of Cassavetes technique there are a few good scenes worth attention on their own (one of my favorite is when Cassavetes orders room service). But individual scenes, no matter how well executed, do not a film make. It's very unfortunate because this film had everything going for it: a phenomenal cast, a talented director, great cinematography, and even a suitable dramatic premise. But the desire to get cute with dialog and getting overly absorbed in character psychology comes at cost to saying something substantive. What a shame, this could have been such a great film.

I'm tempted to review this as two different movies, not because the film's different acts don't flow into each other naturally, but simply because the first third of the film is, I think, so superior to the rest. The first forty minutes or so of Husbands (of the shortened version currently available on DVD in the US) is as fine, if not better, than anything else Cassavetes ever made. The funeral sequence and that at the pub with the singing of songs, is brilliant cinema. The shadow of death and loss is palpable, and the sense of drunken overcompensation can be felt by anyone who has ever, well, overcompensated through drinking. I do not think of Cassavetes as a great visual filmmaker, but some of the compositions in the bar room scene made me think of Rembrandt, with its dark hues giving way to such revealing faces. That these heads are confronted with, what in the composition amount to, disembodied hands makes this seem like Rembrandt in the age of surrealism. Regrettably, after these magical 40 or so minutes, the film then degenerates into all that I think worst about Cassavetes's oeuvre. The crudest male bonding is celebrated as liberational. Indeed, one of the most grotesque of patriarchal tropes gets wheeled out: the woman who gets abused by a man and then falls in love with her attacker. (That the perpetrator is played by Cassavetes himself makes this seem all the more off-putting.) The last couple of scenes are a memorably bleak portrayal of American suburbia, but this is compromised by the fact that we are only allowed to identify with the supposedly "put-upon" masters of this world: the white patriarchy.

As a reaction to the death of a close buddy, three middle-age men, all married with kids, go on a wild psychological joyride that includes, among other things, getting drunk, gambling, and hooking up with some prostitutes. Their reaction is, in fact, overreaction to a mid-life crisis, wherein marriage, children, and jobs create the social chains that bind.The story's basic premise renders an interesting theme. Given some traumatic event, like the death of someone we know, it's natural to grieve and reflect on the choices we've made. We thus gain perspective. But these guys seem oblivious to that process. Their only interest is juvenile self-indulgence of the moment, which creates behavior that is boorish and crude. I could not get interested in them or their drama. Nor did I have any respect for them.The film's visuals are okay. But the runtime is way too long. A ninety-minute plot would have gotten the point across. Every minute beyond that is superfluous. Some segments are painfully drawn-out, like the one wherein they sit around a table in a bar getting drunk and listening to other people sing silly songs. And the script's dialogue is very talky. Basically, the entire plot can be summarized as three guys getting drunk, vomiting, and talking endlessly about themselves.Acting is borderline at best. Some scenes encourage improvisation in acting and dialogue. Visuals trend conventional. There are a lot of close-up shots."Husbands" tries to be a social commentary on the ties that bind. But the plot and characters are rather awful. Direction and performances trend pretentious and self-conscious. And the whole bloated production seems misguided.