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Released by: Fun City Editions
Released on: July 28h, 2022.
Director: Bobby Roth
Cast: Peter Coyote, Nick Mancuso, Carole Laure, Kathryn Harrold, Carol Wayne
Year: 1984
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Heartbreakers – Movie Review:
Written and directed by Los Angeles native Bobby Roth, 1984’s Heartbreakers introduces us to two denizens of the city of angels, they being a painter named Arthur Blue (Peter Coyote) and a businessman named Eli Kahn (Nick Mancuso) who works for the company that his father started, which makes aerobic outfits. Arthur and Eli have long been best friends, insuperable in a lot of ways, and they share the closest of bonds together. They’re also fairly competitive with one another, frequently going after each other when playing their regular game of racquetball and trying to outdo each other when cruising the local bar scene looking for women.
Despite all of this, and that he’s been periodically sleeping with a model he frequently uses named Candy (Carol Wayne), Arthur has been in a relationship with his girlfriend Cyd (Kathryn Harrold) for quite a while. One day, Syd decides to leave him for another artist named King (Max Gail) who has reached a much higher level of commercial success than Arthur. He is, understandably, a bit wrecked by this. While this is going on, Eli’s father, Max (George Morfogen), passes away somewhat unexpectedly.
During this mutually stressful period in their collective lives comes Liliane (Carole Laure), a Frenchwoman who operates an art gallery in the city. It isn’t long before both Arthur and Eli both start to fall in love with the enigmatic woman, which puts additional stress on their friendship.
Based on his own experiences in Los Angeles, Bobby Roth’s Heartbreakers clearly has deep and obvious ties to the city in which it is based. In many ways, the city itself is a character in the movie, you can’t imagine it taking place anywhere else once it starts moving along. Roth and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus do a great job of photographing the authentic Los Angeles locations, with the movie frequently making use of some interesting looking parts of the city to contrast some of the more vanilla aspects (the racquetball court scenes, for example, could take place in any city). As such, it’s got a bit of local flavor to it that is easy to appreciate. The movie also benefits from a typically solid score from none other than Tangerine Dream, which not only adds to but heightens Heartbreakers’ extremely eighties aesthetic.
The performances are very strong here. Coyote and Mancuso are very good as the leads, giving their respective characters some interesting mannerisms and portraying them as believable and with some depth. Kathryn Harrold is also quite good in her supporting role as Cyd, and Carole Laure excellent as Liliane while lovely Carol Wayne steals a few of the scenes she’s in from the rest of the cast.
Despite all these positive qualities, Heartbreakers does suffer from some pacing issues and an ending that might leave some viewers cold. It starts off fairly strong and does a good job of establishing characters and motivations, nicely setting up the very human drama to come, only to slow down a bit in the final third of its running time. Still, the good outweighs the bad here, and those that can appreciate solid drama, interesting characters and the unique backdrop that the Los Angeles of the mid-eighties can provide should find much to appreciate here.
It’s worth pointing out that this appears to be the original X-rated cut of the movie featuring a lengthier sex scene with Candy, Eli and Blue. If you dig around on the menus you’ll find an Easter Egg containing the shorter, R-rated version of this scene.
Heartbreakers – Blu-ray Review:
Heartbreakers never got a DVD release and comes to region A Blu-ray long overdue, restored in 2k from its 35mm interpositive on a 50GB disc with the feature using up 29.7GBs of space on a 50GB disc and framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. Like pretty much everything that Fun City Editions has released so far, this transfer looks nice and filmic. There’s plenty of natural looking film grain here, but very little in the way of actual print damage, just the odd white speck now and again that most won’t likely notice in the first place. Colors look excellent, black levels too. There’s really strong detail throughout and nice depth and texture to the picture as well. No complaints here, the movie looks excellent on this disc.
The only audio option is a 24-bit LPCM 2.0 Mono track. Optional subtitles are offered in English. No problems with the audio to note, the dialogue is easy to understand and follow, there’s a bit of depth to the score and effects and the track is free of any hiss or distortion. The levels are properly balanced and there’s no audible sibilance to complain about, it all sounds very good.
Extras start off with an audio commentary by filmmaker Chris O'Neill and Bill Ackerman of the Supporting Characters podcast. Lots of talk here about the different themes and ideas that the movie explores with plenty of detail offered up about Bobby Roth’s life and times, biographical details of pretty much all of the cast and crew with an understandable emphasis on Coyote and Mancuso, thoughts on the score and the cinematography and quite a bit more. It’s an active, engaging and interesting examination of the feature.
Pieces Of My Life is a new video interview with director Bobby Roth that lasts for thirty-six minutes. He talks here about his family life and growing up in Beverly Hills, going to film school, getting into the film industry and then eventually getting to make Heartbreakers. He also covers the screenplay, influences, casting the picture, working with different crew members, getting Tangerine Dream to do the score and the film's release history.
Mr. Amour And The Outsider is a new interview with stars Peter Coyote and Nick Mancuso that runs twenty minutes and which interviews the two actors separately via video conferencing software. They discuss how they got into acting, early career highlights, thoughts on the script for Heartbreakers, their specific characters, getting along with their co-stars and the different crew members and quite a bit more.
Finishing up the extras on the disc is a still gallery, a thirty second introduction to the feature from Roth, an isolated score option, menus and chapter selections. In addition to the Easter Egg containing the R-rated version of the sex scene, there’s a second one that can be found that contains seventeen minutes of tape-sourced deleted scenes and a third that contains a TV spot..
The release also comes with some nice double-sided cover sleeve art and an insert booklet featuring new essays on the film written by Margaret Barton-Fumo and Richard Harland Smith as well as cast and crew information for the feature and some nice archival still photos.
Heartbreakers - The Final Word:
Heartbreakers isn’t always a perfect movie, it suffers from some pacing issues and an uneven ending, but it is always an interesting one. Performances are very strong across the board and there are some unique ideas at work here. The Blu-ray release from Fun City Editions is very strong, presenting the film in an excellent presentation and a nice selection of extra features that do a nice job of exploring its origins.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Heartbreakers Blu-ray screen caps!
