User reviews

This is not a film where everything appears obvious. It is dark and complicated. It is about how the past haunts you and affects your life in the present. It is the stuff that Freud would have fun dealing with.

The stars in this film give performances that are among the best in their careers.

Dennis Quaid (Frequency, Far From Heaven) is clearly the lead in this picture as the son of a soulless murderer and thief (James Caan). He carries the devil with him through his life and it affects his relationships with women. He runs into an abused housewife (Meg Ryan, in a non-romantic role), and they travel the back-roads of Texas together. Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakesphere in Love) is a thief that plays Caan's companion, even if he is old enough to be her grandfather.

This is written and directed by the Oscar nominated (Wonder Boys) writer of all of the Harry Potter movies, Steve Kloves. He does a fabulous job.

Definitely a movie to watch when you get a chance.

To be honest, I had never heard of this film until I came across it on- line. The blurb sounded OK so I thought why not, it is slow and I could sort of see where it was going but having said that, the acting is good from all the main leads. A young Gwyneth Paltrow plays a brilliant misguided young woman who certainly has a murky past. I have never been a big Meg Ryan fan but this is probably the best performance I have seen from her, too bad it happened 20 years ago.

The story is, as I've already said, quite easy to predict. The hole thing revolves around a traumatic incident which is witnessed by a young boy. Dennis Quaid plays the grown up version of that young boy and does it convincingly with an understated performance.

I've given this film a 7/10 overall. I'd give the acting 10/10 and also the script 10/10. The characters are believable and the acting is quite naturalistic. The reason I give the film overall a 7 is the predictability.

Arlis (Dennis Quaid) is a vending machine owner who roams from town to town in West Texas. Greatly disturbed by horrific memories from his childhood, Arlis fails to connect with the women he meets. He prefers trysts with married women where no strings are attached. All of this changes the day Arlis meets Kay (Meg Ryan). Running away from an abusive and spendthrift husband, Kay encounters Arlis in a bar under amusing circumstances. Soon after, she is traveling with him on his circuit and they are falling in love. Bliss, however, is short. Arlis' evil father (James Caan) re-enters the life of his son and Arlis must once again suffer the consequences of the ties that bind them. Will it be possible for Arlis to break free from his past and begin a new life with Kay?

This is, truly, one of the most haunting films ever made. The story is a multi-faceted study of the nature of good and evil. Quaid and Ryan give such depth to their doomed and complex characters that the viewer stays mesmerized as the story unfolds. Caan, too, is a wonder as the bad-to-the-bone father. As for the sweeping and lovely cinematography, it perfectly realizes the beauty and desolation that is west Texas. The final scenes are guaranteed to put a lump in anyone's throat, tears included. Recommended highly for discriminating movie fans everywhere.

In spite of some flaws, I liked this movie pretty well. Yes, some of the plot turns were highly predictable, but I don't spend my time with a movie trying to predict what's going to happen. I just enjoy it (hopefully). Dennis Quaid was Ok here. I've never cared for him that much, but he is playing a taciturn character, and people always criticize that as bad acting. I disagree. Meg Ryan looked adorable, as always, and played her complicated role very well. I say check it out.

I loved this film except for james caan who always try to act the real bad ass when he plain cannot act ... gwyneth paltrow was excusable for playing the dumb twerp ... meg ryan and dennis quaid made this a film worth watching for me each time i viewed it ... if they had left out caan i would have rated it higher.

Well, it's tough to find more attractive leads than real-life husband-wife Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan but the film is one ugly one. I watched it twice in the past 10 years but canned it halfway through on the second look because it just had too sleazy a feel. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth. You need to take a shower after watching this film.

Like many older classic movies, this centered more on character development and was interesting for at least one look, so I'm NOT totally slamming the film. Quaid and Ryan trade off each other as adulterers in the story - which is "okay" they both say - and James Caan plays Quaid's sicko father and he's a bit scary. Gwyneth Paltrow is the final main character and she's as much, of not more, of a lowlife than the others. This was her first role in films, I've read.

Ryan looks as good as she ever looked: just beautiful, but she's so trashy in here that it makes her lose her appeal. Everyone's trashy in here, actually. That's the film: trailer trash to a "T."

You will never see Meg Ryan in a role like this. She was phenomenal and it is unfortunate she did not get more roles like this. Dennis Quaid and Gwyneth Paltrow were also excellent and these three make the film worth watching. James Caan is fine, but his role is so one- dimensional that no actor can do much with it, and indeed he didn't.

This film is a must see because of the characters. The plot is compelling and very dark, but the characters shine through and illuminate each other in a way that is unique because each character has dimensions that are not explained. Paltrow's character seems like a throwaway, but may be the most important of all. If I were teaching a course on film, I would select this one and ask the students to explain why it works. I usually think I know why a film is excellent, and yet after this film ended, I knew I could not put it into words. The purpose of this review is to suggest you watch this one if you get a chance because you may love it. Most who watched this movie were pleased but unenthusiastic. This film is much, much better than the 6.2 rating it had when I checked.

Once in a while you come across someone who is a little odd, or haunted, or unsociable, or all of the above, and you wonder to yourself how they might have gotten that way. What made them that way? Why are they so terminally sad? Steve Koves has brought us the back story to those questions. His script and handling of the story are stellar. This is not a happy film. But it is a fascinating one.

Everyone in this cast is at their best. But it is Dennis Quaid, who gives the best performance of his ample career, that breaths this story to life, or, death, as it were. He plays Arliss. Arliss has a nickel and dime vending machine business that takes him through the most desolate parts of Texas. His work is so lowly that he doesn't even handle paper money. Coins and dyed chickens are his stock and trade. He pours himself into his boring work as if he is trying to take his mind off of something. Something unpleasant. We know what that something is from the opening of the movie. What unfolds now is the picture of what a destroyed life looks like as it tries to outrun it's past. Quaid is brilliant at creating a haunted and wounded Arliss without making him pathetic. He is the obscure guy you might run across unexpectedly that makes you go, hmmm, what happened to him.

There is nothing about this film that isn't first rate. I am mystified by it's "average" rating here on this site. I suppose if you hate good scripts, skillful directing, brilliant performances, and haunting sound and cinematography, I guess I could see giving this movie a 5. It is certainly possible not to like this type of film. But it is negligent, as a viewer, not to acknowledge it's quality. It is an excellent piece of film making and Dennis Quaid shows just what a brilliant and understated actor he is. James Caan, Meg Ryan, and Gwyneth Paltrow are also up to Quaids level here. I highly recommend this movie. It's different. It's interesting. It's engrossing. And it's brilliantly done.

"Flesh and Bone" is a tense thriller and you might want to see it. I should point out, however, that the film is a might on the sleazy side and I agree with ccthemovieman-1 and their review of the movie. It's good...but the characters are just amazingly awful...much more than you might expect.

The story begins long ago. I child wanders up to a home out in the country and the folks who live there take him in for the night. However, their kindness is taken advantage of, as the boy's evil father (James Caan) sneaks in later that night to rob the place...and ends up murdering three of the four family members. He spares the baby, as there is no way it can identify or hurt him.

Many years pass. The boy is now a VERY quiet and withdrawn guy (Dennis Quaid)...most likely the result of his godawful childhood. Into his life arrives a very screwed up redneck type woman (Meg Ryan) who would seem very at home on an episode of "The Jerry Springer Show". She seems eager to become his woman...but he just seems emotionally constricted and quiet.

Into their lives arrive Daddy...the evil man the son hasn't seen in many years. Daddy is full of buckshot but will survive...but you can't help but think he's got something on his mind...something evil and awful. What is it and what is in store for everyone? And, how does Ryan's character figure into all this?

While Dennis Quaid and James Caan seem pretty natural in their roles, Meg Ryan and Gwyneth Paltrow seem like very odd choices for the film due to their usual roles. Both are very trashy...and, on top of that, Paltrow's character is also a sociopath. Unusual casting, that's for sure! They make for rather compelling characters...and ones you can't help but notice!

So is this film any good? Well, it's well made but NOT for everyone. The beginning is very violent and the characters are all a real mess...so if you want to be able to identify with any of them or like them, good luck! On the positive side, it's very tense and it's hard to stop watching...even if the twist is very difficult to believe. I'd say more about that twist but I don't want to ruin the suspense.

If you could reduce this film to a graph, it would look like the Himalayas. Some great peaks, some lowly valleys. A potpouri of amatuerish Kabuki, brilliant lines and interpretation, sinister suspense, red neck satire and a really lousy conclusion. Meg Ryan reminded you of why her career took off like a rocket. Quaid went from subtle to serial wooden. Paltrow showed a new dimension, and Caan demonstrated why his best days were long past. At times, I would have given it a 7, but it's attempt at a pithy resolution tanked it to an unfortunate 5. Still, I'd recommend it as a worthwhile cinema safari, as long as consistency isn't a requisite.

I've been thankful for many things during the strange journey that has been my life. Among them was that I had never seen nor heard of Gwyneth Paltrow before seeing Steven Kloves' unsung, too-often trashed work, Flesh and Bone. Although this film has been deemed unwatchable by some; primarily, I suspect, by those who simply cannot deal with Meg Ryan in any form, Flesh and Bone is entirely watchable and often engrossing.

I stumbled onto it by accident one afternoon, when the film I had paid to see suffered a projector crash, leaving me to wander the nearly empty multiplex at my leisure. Flesh and Bone, said the sign over the door. Hmm. supernatural thriller with voodoo elements? Well, not really, although the scene that greeted me as I entered: a very scary-looking James Caan, with shotgun, skulking through a shadowy interior, made me think my initial assessment had been close (I had entered its theater a few minutes after the film had started.) Just a few more minutes passed before I realized that I was in the presence of something, at the least, unusual. First, considerable time elapsed without Dennis Quaid flashing his '55 DeSoto grille grin even once. In fact, he was scowling like all getout. Meg Ryan barely smiled either and it was well into the film before she first flipped her hair (while talking about pickles). Very strange. Being something of a sucker for films that cast against type, I was getting pulled in. But WHO was the spooky chick who kept walking in and out of various scenes, shoplifting something in almost each case?

That was Gwyneth, of course. If she had played the role of the deeply alienated Ginnie later in her career, she certainly could have pulled it off, but the mystery of her character, the thing that made you try to imagine the circumstances that had created such a creature, would never have manifested. It just would have been Gwynnie playing Ginnie. I'll be honest, I've remained immune to the whole Gwyneth thing. To me, she's something like Gouda cheese; certainly edible, but best if you're in the mood for a snack with somewhat more aroma than flavor. I admit that I've always dug her Mom, Blythe Danner, among the most delicately fair of all cinematic flowers. But I loved Gwyneth Paltrow in this film, still do, and always will. I don't think she stole the show, as some seem to, but her perfectly-played Ginnie was absolutely essential to it.

The rather default brutality that lurks in Flesh and Bone could seem artificial, but against the historical backdrop of Texas, where it is set, the film's slant makes sense. Texas history has been drenched in blood and tragedy from the start; Cabeza De Vaca, the lonely, ignominous demise of the LaSalle expedition, which foundered and was swallowed up on its Gulf Coast in an attempt to navigate the Mississippi northward, conflict with Spain and Mexico, the Comanche terror, the slaughter of its vast buffalo herds, its rape by oil and cattle culture, Texas politicians (just hitting a few high spots). Merely passing through the state can give one the sense that a loose black hole is about, not a massive one, but big enough.

Flesh and Bone is a promenade of the gravitationally doomed. Everyone in the film seems to be drifting toward the event horizon of an unseen singularity, just beginning to be stretched out of shape. Closest to oblivion is James Caan's chilling Roy Sweeney, a character in the mold of Christopher Walken's very bad dad in At Close Range but chicken-fried to the brink of carbonization; a man for whom conscience is no longer even a concept. Plunging close behind is his son Arliss (Quaid), someone who, after matriculating under his father's brutal tutelage, has become an exile to his own life. His flickering soul is not quite dead yet, but give it time. Meg Ryan's Kay Davies, the unknowing survivor, as an infant, of the film's opening horror, is a type of gently tragic heroine one can see anywhere, but most often in the South, the most culturally monolithic and unforgiving region of an unforgiving America. (Texas is the West but also, most certainly, the South.) Free-form and fundamentally cheerful personalities like Kay's may not always fare well there, unless legitimized by kids and a ring; something her character is beginning to understand as she pops, drunk, out of a paper cake at a roadhouse hoo-rah. Paltrow's Ginnie is possibly the most recent gravitational captive, but she has entered the plunge with cryogenic conviction, forming a binary dark star with Caan's character.

I liked this little film enough to collect it and have never regretted it. There is real psychological texture, a noiresque sense of doom, convincing intimacy set against a vast West Texas backdrop, a house haunted by ghosts living and dead, a brief, poignant performance by the never-failing Scott Wilson, a great score by the brilliant Thomas Newman (I started watching the TV series Boston Public just to hear its opening theme music, which he composed) and a closing scene as mythic as that of any cowboy classic. The film's conclusion flirts a bit with improbability but still works because, dear friends, karma does exist. It's not just a hippie word. Leave the Anti-Megs to their own gravitational plunge and enjoy.

A pretty standard drama with an exceptional performance by Gwyneth Paltrow in, I believe, her 2nd or 3rd movie. This chick is scary (James Caan is her older boyfriend) and you wouldn't turn your back on her for a second. From the first shot of her (with her Lolita sunglasses) you know she's going to hook you.

Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid, and James Caan are all fine, as is Scott Wilson (IN COLD BLOOD fame), but Paltrow is the most fascinating and disturbing character. I don't think this flick did any business at all, but check it out. A 7 out of 10. Best performance = Gwyneth Paltrow. A nice tour of Texas or the Southwest.

probably one of the best vehicles for Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Palthrow and Caan were interesting also.

I think Quaid is somehow irritating to watch as an actor. he is not handsome and I suppose appeals to a certain audience but not to me. Ryan was good- and this shows her girl next door sex appeal.

Palthrow was very sexy in her bad girl role.

Quaid always appears to me as a guy who had bad breath and stinky farts in school. I met him once when he was filming DOA in San Marcos. He is from Houston.

His brother is ugly and knows it- Dennis maybe doesn't know it yet?

I just saw this film and came away underwhelmed. After seeing the film I took a look at the comments on IMDb and was surprised to see comments like "wow!" and "awesome film!" I think the rating of 6.2 better describes it. It's not a bad film, but it sure isn't a great one. The acting is good, and it was shot well, quite well actually. The problem is, that it's just plain boring...the plot is uninteresting..I had a hard time watching it through to the end. This is a film that isn't a bad way to kill a couple of hours, but certainly wouldn't be worth going to the theaters to see.

As far as the acting goes, Meg Ryan gives a typical Meg Ryan performance, as does Dennis Quaid. James Caan does a good job as a crazed character, although someone said Gwenyth Paltorows acting was outstanding (a good reason not to take drugs and watch movies at the same time), but I found her totally uninteresting....She doesn't do anything in the movie and doesn't factor into it at all really.

"Flesh and Bone," with it's superb actors and their portrayals of an artistically told story in the Texas Outback, gives us a cultural peek at ways of life we would probably not encounter otherwise while solving a crime mystery and telling a cowboy's love story.

Haunted by his childhood, Arlis, so realistically portrayed by Dennis Quaid, reveals to us what being a cowboy is about. Running his business across West Texas with his memories, his devil on his heels, Arlis triumphs and beats his flesh and bone genetics. His double star-crossed love for the same child and woman unfolds as the story is told and he becomes a lonesome hero worthy of his lone star.

Gwyneth Paltrow's acting talents can be seen as she makes you believe she is Ginnie, a waiflike con seemingly devoid of any feelings other than borderline necrophilia and spiteful nastiness.

James Caan, as Roy, is Arlis' cruel father and Ginnie's old-enough-to-be-her-grandfather lover. Caan plays the the villain of both the past and the present with a calculated coldness that literally makes his eyes sparkle. (Watch for it!) Roy will make you ever thankful for the your own father who raised you, and your respect for and understanding of his son Arlis grows with the movie.

Meg Ryan makes us want to embrace Kay, the drunken but lovely cake dancer caught in an abusive marriage but who falls in love with cowboy Arlis. Ryan works her magic portraying Kay as a gentle, sometimes-intelligent, sometimes-naive soul who has been down on her luck since a fateful night before her first birthday but who still manages to smile at the world and believe in hope.

Caan's and Paltrow's characters, people who we pray we never meet, come off with a game playing realness that makes us remember why we lock our doors in our motel rooms and our homes. This uneasiness is balanced by the empathy we have for Ryan's and Quaid's good to the bone characters.

Never has a cowboy's love been better explained than in Dennis Quaid's face in the final moments of the film.

Four four-star performances by four top actor, this overlooked movie will become a classic someday in the near future.

The Willets family finds a boy in their yard. The phone is out and they take him in for the night. His father Roy Sweeney (James Caan) comes in to rob the family but he ends up massacring them. Only the baby survives. Some thirty years later, Arlis Sweeney (Dennis Quaid) travels Texas filling his vending machines. On one of his stops, he encounters stripper Kay Davies (Meg Ryan) who pops out of a cake for a party at the bar. Instead she passes out and as a favor, Arlis takes her to his motel room. He keeps seeing grifter Ginnie (Gwyneth Paltrow) on the road and he gives Kay a ride. Arlis gets close to Kay but they don't know about their past connection.

I like the haunted feel of the desolate Texas landscape. Meg Ryan is amazing as the broken Kay. I really like the feel of this movie but a couple of things bothered me a little. It's silly to keep running into Gwyneth Paltrow. Her scenes are better served if she's with James Caan. There's no real need that she keeps almost running into Dennis Quaid. The movie needs slightly more Caan. Gwyneth is good especially as a newcomer. The last act is just anti-climatic. It's missing something. I also don't understand what Roy was trying to do at the house. I guess he is simply a bad man who is torturing his son because Arlis could never tell Kay about that night. It's not like Roy wants something from Arlis. It doesn't make much sense.

"Flesh and Bone" was the second film to be directed by Steve Kloves, the first being "The Fabulous Baker Boys". It was also, to date, the last film to be directed by Kloves, even though nearly thirty years have passed since it came out in 1993.

In the opening scene, a family in Texas take a young boy named Arlis into their home when he says that he is lost. Unfortunately, they have fallen victim to a scam; that night Arlis lets his father, Roy, into the house to commit a burglary, and when he is disturbed Roy murders the entire family apart from a baby girl.

The rest of the film is set in the present day. Arlis is now an adult, earning a living restocking vending machines. His is a lonely lifestyle, involving driving long distances in his truck. The film deals with his relationship with a young woman named Kay, whom he meets during his travels, and with what happens when he is reunited with Roy, whom he hates and fears. (It would appear that Roy has never been brought to justice for his crime). Other major characters are Kay's estranged husband Reese and Roy's much younger girlfriend, Ginnie. Towards the end it is revealed that Kay is the young girl who survived Roy's massacre of her family. The title "Flesh and Bone" refers to the family relationship between Arlis and Roy, and may derive from the saying "What's bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh".

The action takes place in the flat, largely featureless plains of Texas, and it seemed to me that Kloves was influenced stylistically by Terrence Malick's two early films "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven", both of which are also set in similar Midwestern landscapes and which also deal with murder. (In 1993 Malick had only directed those two films; his third, "The Thin Red Line", would not appear until 1998, twenty years after "Days of Heaven". He has since made several others). I would not, however, rank the film nearly as highly as either of Malick's, especially "Days of Heaven" which I regard as one of the greatest films of the seventies. Malick and his cinematographers are able to find a haunting beauty in the landscapes in which they are set, whereas in "Flesh and Bone" the Texas plains never look anything other than bleak and forbidding.

The differences between this film and "The Fabulous Baker Boys" were perhaps best summed up by Roger Ebert, who said that the earlier film was "filled with life and spontaneity", whereas there is a "forced quality" to "Flesh and Bone", Which he described as "depressing for some of the right reasons, and all of the wrong ones". I would also add that "The Fabulous Baker Boys" contains three excellent acting contributions from Jeff and Beau Bridges and from Michelle Pfeiffer. There is nothing really comparable in "Flesh and Bone", although Dennis Quaid is reasonably good as the haunted, taciturn Arlis, and it was interesting to see Meg Ryan in something other than the romantic comedies which seemed to be her stock-in-trade during the late eighties and nineties. (I preferred her, however, in "Courage under Fire", another serious drama she made during this period).

This is never going to be one of my favourite films. It nevertheless seems a shame that Kloves gave up directing after only two films. "The Fabulous Baker Boys" is excellent, and even in "Flesh and Bone" there are enough directorial touches to suggest that he could have been a very accomplished director had he persisted with this career path. 5/10.

Perhaps some people only want to see Meg Ryan in romantic comedies, or perhaps IMDb voters give this a low average rating because 'nothing happens', but look beneath the surface and you will find a dark and haunting drama of the first order, with the best work from all involved for many years before or since.

Steve Kloves, completely 'miscast' as the adaptive screenwriter for the Harry Potter films (he writes in American, for heaven's sake) here produces a great original work as a writer/director, utilizing some amazing visuals from Phillipe Rousselot (d.o.p.) and music from Thomas Newman (a score suitably subtle, haunting and moving). Caan, Ryan and a pre-fame Gwyneth Paltrow are all on top form but the real star here is Dennis Quaid, whose face, a canvas of tortured memories and struggling decency, says more than Kloves could ever hope to write. As director he chooses wisely; he gives Quaid a single line, then keeps the camera rolling.

"Flesh and Bone" remains to be one of the great films of the nineties, sitting alongside "Bright Angel" as one of the decade's most tragically neglected classics. Perhaps the fact it contains such a high degree of subtlety was why it wasn't appreciated when it was first released, the most frequently stated criticism being that its climax is dramatically unsatisfying, yet its somber ending works perfectly. Outside of "Hurlyburly" it is unquestionably Meg Ryan's finest performance, the same going for Quaid who gives his character a quiet desperation that becomes quite devastating by the end. Caan is great as always, but it is Paltrow who really impresses, playing a role bereft of the sugary sweetness that plagued the majority of her roles that followed. Scott Wilson also shines in a small but memorable role. "Flesh and Bone" may never receive the attention it deserves, which is a shame because it is unquestionably a lyrical masterpiece, beautifully shot and acted, recalling those low-key gems of the seventies like "The Rain People". Highly recommended.