With a relaxed, gliding surface and a jagged soul underneath, Handsome Harry is a rather…well, pleasant isn't the word to use for a tale of middle-aged female desperation and just-plain-aged male melancholy. Most of these characters are on the back end of their useful lives and they know it. Their happiness and their own futures are no longer in their own hands and they're dependent on others to an extent they don't like to admit to themselves. Everyone in this story is practically a stranger to everyone else, even spouses, lovers and one-time best friends. But what draws you into this film and carries you along is the honest humanity of people grappling with their awkward, messy and diminishing lives.Harry Sweeney (Jamey Sheridan) is a silver-haired fox. A small town electrician, he's the sort of beguiling charmer who can still make any woman over 30 smile while being guy every other man over 50 wishes he was more like. But when Harry gets a call from an old Vietnam era Navy buddy, he has to let his easy smile drop and take a journey back to the most awful moment of his life. The buddy, Thomas Kelley (Steve Buscemi), is dying and asks Harry for some help saying out of Hell. 35 years earlier, Harry, Tommy and three others almost beat a 6th friend to death after finding out he was gay. Tommy thinks he's the one who crushed the guy's hand with a metal armature and begs Harry to travel to Miami and seek forgiveness on his behalf. The trip brings Harry to the doorsteps of the other three, now ensconced in lives not anywhere as comfortable as they seem. Rheems (John Savage) has had his manhood and his family fall to ashes. Porter (Aidan Quinn) has a knot of anger and self-loathing in his heart that hasn't loosed with the passing years. Gebhardt (Titus Welliver) has made himself into his best idea of a man, only to fall into a trap from which he can escape only by destroying everything good in his heart. And their victim, David Kagan (Campbell Scott)? He's the one who seeks out Harry and forces him to be honest about himself for perhaps the first time in his life.The plot of this film isn't anything to write home about, serving only as the stage upon which Harry and others play out the little scenes of their lives, but the performances more than make up for it. Led by Jamey Sheridan's accessible torment, Steve Buscemi's despair and the simmering anger of John Savage, Aidan Quinn and Titus Welliver, you can't take your eyes off this cast. And that's not even getting into the painful loneliness of Mariann Mayberry as Rheem's wife and Karen Young as a waitress who's carried a torch for Harry for many years. Watching these actors play these roles is a marvelous experience. Campbell Scott doesn't quite make it, but that's mostly because Kagan is more a plot device bringing the movie to an end rather than a real person.Handsome Harry would have been even better if the plot had given those performances some direction and used them to build to a conclusion instead of letting one simply occur. This sort of story should be like walking up a flight of stairs, with each step taking you to a new level of drama and emotion until you reach the top, which is a culmination of every step taken before. Handsome Harry is more like taking one step up and then walking along a flat beam. You're off the ground but you never get any higher than when you started. As engrossing as these individual scenes are, they don't do enough to connect with or build upon one another. That stands out most clearly at the end, which is supposed to be emotionally crushing but isn't that much worse than what we've previously seen from Harry's friends and their own personal tortures.This isn't a feel good film, but it isn't a feel bad movie either. Handsome Harry is a motion picture that just makes you feel. And that's more than worth watching.

.....in a new subclass of male / female sexuality: "STI-FLEXUALS."(( "STI-FLEXUALITY"......it's a whole new word....a whole new descriptive title for a subclass of human sexuality. Beginning today, there is not only Heterosexuality....Homosexuality....Bisexuality..., BUT also this new subcategory. And peculiar to this subclass of "Stifled Sexuality" comes a new label for the Killer Fear that suppressing such feelings and behavior generates in us: "CLOSETOPHOBIA"....fear of coming out of the you-know-what )).(( And when, in your less than fully happy life, events arise which force you to realize that it is YOU who have Stifled...no, Crushed...the God-given purpose in life of another human being (in very fact, the Love of Your Life), you become nothing less than a Shattered human being. Your only...ONLY hope being the possibility of Forgiveness" )).Given us by this film....this writer....this director and, ultimately, by Harry himself....are vividly disturbing scenes of the devastating emotional and physical damages that such "Stifling" of our own sexual needs and desires can bring about. Following is just a very short list of some of those damages:Very often, unhappiness and a sense of not having succeeded on the part of any spouse caught up in a marriage to a "Sti-flexual" partner (divorce is often the outcome).Frequently, lack of closeness and connection between the "Sti-flexual" parent and his / her children, if any.In most cases there is the despair and sense of non-worth which can, for years, smolder within the "Sti-flexual" (even suicide has been a drastic result).Violence (often fatal) by one or more persons against an individual(s).Lastly in situations like this, successful attempts at "Making it Right" or "Making up for Lost Time" are rarely achieved...or come far too late. So ask yourself after viewing this film -- Has Harry succeeded in doing so....or hasn't he?If you learn nothing else from this film, take away this: What will ALWAYS stay with a someone like Harry is the ever hurting realization that this lost part of his (maybe Our) life has become just a throwaway....instead of a sweet and wonderful what-might-have-been. YET, can there still be REAL happiness in this kind of a man's future? Perhaps....perhaps. And in this regard, there is a based-on-true-life motion picture story of just such a salvation, now making its way through the new releases circuit. Aaahh, so perhaps all potential, and real, Harrys should be making their way to see this big-star, and likely award winning film, titled, "BEGINNERS."Thanks, Harry, the trip's been fun!(( PS--So, has this movie been talking about only Harry....or perhaps Me....or perhaps You, as well? ))****

A Vietnam veteran, Harry Sweeney, goes on a quest to help a dying ex-Navy buddy. Instead, Harry unravels a deep, dark, dormant secret that brings understanding – and maybe hope – to two friends who never should have parted ways.Handsome Harry is a perfect example of lean and tight writing. Every frame tells a story. Kudos to director Bette Gordon for taking Nicholas T. Proferes' ponderable screenplay and providing a highly polished and realistic story.This film has nothing to do with the military. It has to do with ignorance, intolerance, and fear. Ignorance, intolerance, and fear exist everywhere.Yet, one man, affectingly played by Campbell Scott - the only man who exudes love - lived his life the way he started it, true to himself. I can only say, "Wow, what a powerful statement director and writer make in the final scene." Here's hoping viewers catch Profere's lessen: Don't wait until you're middle-aged and look back and say, "I wish I had done it differently." Life's too short to be under the thumb of ignorance, intolerance, and fear. Love should guide us all. Never be afraid to love someone.I bow to all the actors, blow a kiss to Ms. Gordon, high-five Nick, and enthusiastically clap to the music creator/director.

HANDSOME HARRY is a brave little film, written by Nicholas T. Proferes and directed by Bette Gordon, a film that should be required viewing as the absurdities of the 'Don't ask, Don't tell' debate continue to divide this country. This is a script so tightly and beautifully constructed that it poses questions to the audience and lets the audience arrive at its own conclusions. It is a searingly intense story, successful in the manner in which the director allowed the cast of extraordinary actors to simply let the tale play out. There is a profound honesty here that is rarely found in other films that take on tough subjects, and without preaching, sermonizing, or taking sides it simply places an incident before our eyes, allowing the incident and its subsequent permutations of its consequences mold the characters we meet. Harry Sweeney (Jamey Sheridan, a brilliant stage actor who should have been considered for an Oscar for this performance) is Handsome Harry - calm, somewhat secretive middle-aged man living in a small town where he is known as a good guy and a good singer to the acquaintances in the town diner. Divorced, father to a son Bobby (Asher Grodman) with whom he has difficulty relating, Harry is considering selling his electronic shop to his sole employee Pauley (Bill Sage) when Bobby arrives from Chicago for a strained weekend visit. The visit is interrupted by a telephone call from Kelley (Steve Buscemi) who is hospitalized with only days to live: Kelley insists he speak with Harry and out of obligation to his old friend Vietnam war buddy, Harry goes out of town for the visit. Kelley shares his tortured secret with Harry: thirty years ago while serving in the Navy Kelley and Harry were in a tight group of sailors - Harry, Kelley, Porter (Aidan Quinn), Rheems (John Savage), Gebhardt (Titus Welliver) and Kagan (Campbell Scott) - and in a drunken brawl all of the the group subjected Kagan to a beating because of homophobia: all of the men participated in the cruel act but one crushed the jazz pianist Kagan's right hand with an armature, destroying the hand from ever performing again. Kelley's reason for calling Harry is that Kelley believes he was the one who crushed Kagan's hand and wants Harry to find Kagan and ask him for forgiveness. Kelley dies after Harry promises o fulfill his mission. Harry sets out to find Kagan on trail of all of his group of fellows who served in Vietnam thirty years ago. We meet each one: Porter is a professor who has distanced himself in name and place from the shame of the incident; Rheems is a wealthy land investor whose marriage is crumbling under the strain of alcohol, homophobia, and dark memories and Harry's unwanted visit results in Rheems throwing his wife Judy (Mariann Mayberry) out along with Harry; Gebhardt has become a evangelistic redneck who also is blinded by homophobia. None of the men will discuss the old incident or assist Harry in defining whether Kelley was responsible for the crushing injuring or not. Harry finds Kagan's address, and when Kagan isn't home he leaves a note with Kagan's housekeeper explaining his visit. Harry returns home, distraught, emotionally exhausted, desiring an end to the lingering nightmare of that beating thirty years ago. After singing in a quartet contest Harry spies Kagan in the audience and the two leave for a dinner in a deserted restaurant. There Kagan shares ALL of the truth about the incident and about his relationship with Harry and the film ends quietly and painfully with the truth being on the table. Every member in the cast is a first class actor, but the profound depth of Jamey Sheridan's recreation of the role of Harry is simply stunning. Buscemi, Quinn, and especially Campbell Scott also provide powerful performances. The film is haunted by the music of Anton Sanko and cinematographer Nigel Bluck sustains the mood of the piece with a fine grasp of just how much of each of the characters' physical features to show to make the story propel. Director Bette Gordon should be honored not only for the brilliance of her direction but also for the courage in sharing this sensitive story that is one of the strongest views of the inequities of the current military/governmental debate about equality in the military. Brilliant film! Grady Harp