Search - Lookin' to Get Out [Director's Cut] on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Violence, Brief Nudity, Nudity, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Profanity Movie Release: 1982 DVD Release: 06/30/2009 Format: DVD - Color,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Edition: Director's Cut,Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: French SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 0 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 5 Genres: Comedy, Crime Comedy

Jon Voight starred and co-wrote the script for this comedy (directed by Hal Ashby) concerning two gamblers on the run from their debts who try to score big in Las Vegas. When Alex Kovas (Jon Voight) loses $10,000 to local New York City hoods Joey (Allen Keller) and Harry (Jude Farese) in a poker game, he hightails it to Vegas with his pal Jerry Feldman (Burt Young). In Vegas they make friends with Patti Warner (Ann-Margret), a former call girl, and move into the MGM Grand Hotel after winning big in the casino. But word gets out and Joey and Harry take a trip out West to pay the boys a surprise visit. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Jon Voight - Alex Kovac
Ann-Margret - Patti Warner
Burt Young - Jerry Feldman
Bert Remsen - Smitty
Jude Farese - Harry

No one seemed to be especially fond of Hal Ashby's 1982 comedy Lookin' To Get Out when it was initially released, and that appears to have included Ashby himself. The movie received a minimal release and was a major box office flop, but Ashby, who was an award-winning editor before be became a director, quietly recut the film to give it a more personal feel years after its brief stay in theaters, and donated a print of the new version to the UCLA Film Archives. Apparently he didn't tell many people about it, because it wasn't until Nick Dawson, a writer working on a book about Ashby, interviewed Jon Voight that the star, co-screenwriter and co-producer of the movie became aware of the expanded cut, which Dawson had seen at a UCLA screening. Voight arranged for Ashby's revised edition of the movie to be released on DVD, and that's what appears on Warner Home Video's new edition of the film. Lookin' To Get Out has been transferred to disc in widescreen format, letterboxed in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.78.1 on conventional televisions and enhanced for 16:9 playback on anamorphic monitors. A disclaimer notes that since Ashby's donated print was used as the source material, the quality is not pristine, but it looks far better than the warning might lead you to fear; Haskell Wexler's sharp and atmospheric camerawork is one of the best things about the movie, and if the print shows some wear here and there, it's more than acceptable. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo, preserving the original monophonic sound mix, and the reproduction is fine, though Jon Voight and Burt Young's sub-wiseguy mumbling is as annoying and occasionally hard to follow now as it ever was (making the English subtitles all the more useful). The dialogue is in English, with optional English and French subtitles but no multiple language options. As a bonus, the disc includes a short documentary on the making of the film and the discovery of Ashby's extended cut, which features interviews with Voight, Young, leading lady Ann-Margret and co-screenwriter Al Schwartz. And as for the new cut of the movie, it does feel more like a Hal Ashby film, as more than one person in the documentary attests, though ultimately it's Hal Ashby doing a misguided homage to John Cassavetes (the film suggests some semi-comic fusion of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Husbands), with Voight still as miscast as ever in the lead, even he was responsible for part of the script. Still, if nothing else this gives fans of Ashby's often impressive body of work a chance to see one of his most obscure films, and in an edition preferred by the director. It's an asset to film historians, even if it's still a flawed and uneven picture. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide