Customer Reviews

Caveman's Valentine (Widescreen)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Romulus Ledbetter: "Swarms of moth-seraphs howl in my skull. Lies vex them."

Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):

1. Paranoid schizophrenic Romulus Ledbetter (Samuel L. Jackson) lives in a cave in New York's Inwood Park.
2. He believes that the root of all evil dwells at the top of the Chrysler Building, emitting rays that control the world.
3. He has a host of moth-like angels swarming in his head.
4. The dead body frozen in a tree outside his cave is no hallucination
5. Gripping but highly improbable plot follows, as Ledbetter searches for answers.

This is one of Jackson's finest performances, in an over-looked murder/fantasy movie that lacks a great plot, but makes up for it with great acting and vivid imagery.

If you can ignore the impossible and unlikely bits, this is a good rental for fans of the unusual.

Amanda Richards

There were many things missing or different from the book, but what movie adaptation is perfect?... Samuel L. Jackson was wonderful as Romulus, and the story made a good movie. If you enjoy the movie, you should pick up the George Dawes Green book -- same author as The Juror, also adapted into a movie starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin.
Also, on the DVD's "Deleted Scenes" section there is a WONDERFULLY choreographed scene with Rom's "moth-seraphs" which is just amazingly beautiful to watch! It's too bad they cut it from the movie, but be sure to take it in when you're going through the Bonus Features.

I got this movie just because of Samuel Jackson. It turned out to be a great movie. On the one hand, it's a very decent thriller, on the other hand, it's a good psychological drama. The story of homeless man witnessing a murder is not the most original but the movie makes it fresh by very good character development. Having said this, the thriller part of the movie is not perfect. There are certain aspects of it that could be done better or plot sometimes could be more logical. But still the overall approach to the movie, its atmsosphere and great Samuel Jackson play make this movie worth watching.

This is the story of a schizophrenic homeless man who went to Julliard and solves murders. Not exactly the usual stuff. The plot is just too strange and contrived for it to work, but the acting is excellent. Samuel Jackson is the homeelss guy, and manages to make an unbelievable person believable. (Jackson is one of those actors who can do just about anything)

More suprising, though, is Anthony Michael Hall; who would have thought the essence of 80s geek, adolescent division, would turn in a fine performance as a Gucci-loafer-pinstriped-suit yuppie lawyer? In fact, an interesting change would be to have them swap roles. Take the pinstripes and the Guccis away from Hall and give them to Jackson, and dress Hall up as the crazy homeless guy, rags and all. I can't imagine Hall in dreadlocks, but it might work! They might even manage it.

Samuel Jackson at the top of his game!

Romulus, a burned out mental-case, a piano prodigy from Julliard, leaves home to live at a cave in the heart of NYC. Hearing voices and convinced that the imaginary "Mr. Stuyvesant" is out to get him, he unwittingly becomes involved in a SM-murder case.

His daughter, a NYC cop, and estranged wife, continue to drive the human heart that beats powerfully inside his troubled chest. Haunted by the nightmares of the past and burdened by a gift that he could not share with the world due to his mental condition, Romulus still ends up proving that he is one of the cleanest characters in this gritty thriller.

Romulus is a character you care for. You want this man to survive and do well. He does it, as best as he can. I especially liked the emotional father-daughter scenes where his daughter desperately wants to establish that basic link with him but due to his mental condition does not quote know how. Very well written tear-jerker scenes there.

Samuel Jackson has not disappointed me since that explosive part in Pulp Fiction. All his engines are still firing strong. Don't you miss it.

The idea of a homeless man (well, not homeless, he lives in a cave) solving a murder mystery is original. I came into this movie with low expectations. I hadn't read the book, and the few reviews I had seen were dismissive of the film. I was pleasantly surprised.

As usual, Samuel L. Jackson gives an excellent performance. His paranoid character, Romulus, is unrelentingly tense. I was distracted enough by the parallel story of his relationship with his daughter, Lulu, that the solution to the murder was a surprise.

The look of this film is great. Romulus' visions are frightening and must have been even more effective on a big screen. A viewer who has read the book tells me that what was left out of the movie did not detract from the film, in fact, it tightened up the story for the most part. The only parts that left me wondering, were why the insurance tycoon, Bob, wanted to help Romulus out. And the finale was a bit unbelievable, but by then I was willing to suspend disbelief enough to go with it.

Caveman's Valentine was a satisfying suspense movie with good acting. Go for it!

There are some very effective moments in this strange story of a homeless man who solves a grisly murder, but they are due to the fine acting of Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role. His part - that of a Julliard trained (!) schizophrenic homeless bum - is, to put it midly, unbelievable. In addition, there is a wealthy New York lawyer, played well by Anthony Michael Hall, who is called Pinstripes by the sarcastic homeless man, but responds to his request for clothes by inviting him to his Manhattan condo as his guest, and gives him a suit and tie (!!). Huh?

The title of the movie sounds puerile enough. Who and what is a caveman's Valentine, anyway? However, this movie is anything but facetious or shallow. Astounding in its depth and the manner in which it treats certain subjects with sensitivity, I would describe this movie, which is based on a novel of the same name by George Dawes Green, as nothing short of genius.
Romulus Ledbetter (Samuel L. Jackson) is a schizophrenic former musician who renounced middle-class life to live in a rocky enclosure in Manhattan's Inwood Park. One cold Valentine's Day, driven by voices and subliminal messages he finds on his TV set (That's the surreal bit: He gets to watch TV even though there's nothing in the cave for it to be plugged into), he ventures outside to find the dead body of 20-year-old Scotty Gales. Romulus believes this to be the work of an omniscient and evil mastermind by the name of Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant who happens to live in the Chrysler Building.
Romulus believes it to be his moral and divine duty to track down the murderer of Scotty Gales and thus his adventure begins.
We the audience are offered glimpses into the former life of Romulus; his musical education at Juilliard, his wife, his daughter now grown up and with the police force, and his decline into insanity. This movie deals sensitively with the issue of homelessness, mental illness and the emotional turmoil that families of the mentally ill go through. Romulus' family is torn between helping him and rejecting him for his non-acceptance of their lifestyle, values and middle-class sensibilities.
We catch glimpses too of Romulus' version of reality; of the voices and visions that haunt him, of the moth-seraphs that dwell in his head, of the manifestation of his wife, also his Muse, each time he sits before a piano and quakes. We see, in two scenes, his musical genius and his emotional involvement with his music.
As the plot thickens, we see that the main suspect is not the enigmatic Stuyvesant but an artist named David Leppenraub, who had used Scotty Gates as a nude model on several occasions. Romulus seeks to entrap and expose Leppenraub as the killer, but matters are not as simple as one thinks.
'The Caveman's Valentine' is a detective drama, a psychological thriller and a character study all rolled into one, and brought to a state of high polish by the efforts of Samuel L. Jackson and Kasi Lemmons.
No one could have made Romulus Ledbetter as real and alive as Samuel L. Jackson did. For his performance alone, I would rate the movie 5 stars out of 5. And Miss Kasi Lemmons? I'd give her a standing ovation for outstanding directorial work.

Having consistently enjoyed Samuel L. Jackson in his wide variety of acting roles, I truly expected great things from this movie. I'm sorry to say that I was incredibly disappointed. This film tried to give the impression that it was saying a great deal, when in reality it said nothing. Its overuse of intensely graphic imagery simply tried to hide a very weak story. It struck me as a movie that would win raves at a film festival or a film school, drawing descriptions such as "how deep!" or "it's multi-layered" from people who felt that this was the right thing to say. Unfortunately, I'm neither a film student nor was I at a festival. I simply wanted to enjoy a movie. My biggest regret is not giving up hope on the movie. I kept convincing myself that I should stick with it because there had to be a satisfying ending. There wasn't. This movie, unfortunately, feels very long and to me was a total disappointment. If your idea of a good time is a few hours of super-artsy fluff, then this is the perfect movie. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Jackson as an actor, but I think he made a mistake with this movie.

The energy level of this music is the highest that I have ever calibrated (950) using Dr. Hawkins Map of Consciousness (from the book "Power versus Force"). Calibrated it only after viewing the movie three times (a first). Give me more music that stirs the soul like this!!!