
DJ Zack and pimp Jack end up in prison for being too laid-back to avoid being framed for crimes they didn't commit. They end up sharing a cell with eccentric Italian optimist Roberto, whose limited command of the English language is both entertaining and infuriating. More useful to them is the fact that Roberto knows an escape route.... (Full plot summary below)
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DJ Zack and pimp Jack end up in prison for being too laid-back to avoid being framed for crimes they didn't commit. They end up sharing a cell with eccentric Italian optimist Roberto, whose limited command of the English language is both entertaining and infuriating. More useful to them is the fact that Roberto knows an escape route.
Leave your thoughts about Down by Law.
| Total FilmEmma JohnstonA stylish black-and-white prison romp with a sense of humour as offbeat as its perfectly cast stars (John Lurie, Roberto Benigni and singer Tom Waits). |
| VarietyVariety StaffThe Jim Jarmusch penchant for off-the-wall characters and odd situations is very much in evidence. |
| Antagony & EcstasyTim BraytonEvery single incident in the film is meaningful. |
| Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonThe claustrophobic setting and semi-improvised tone might suggest something closer to sitcom than cinema (had Jarmusch seen Porridge?), but Robby Müller’s stately monochrome photography single-handedly lifts it into the realm of Proper Art. It’s a sad and beautiful world indeed. |
| Daily Telegraph (UK)Martin ChiltonAlternately downbeat, witty, bleak and optimistic. Down by Law is a delight, right down to the unexpected last scene. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawDown By Law is effortlessly laidback, superbly elegant. Jarmusch made it look easy. |
| The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe excitement of Down by Law comes not from what it's about. Reduced to its plot, it is very slight. But the plot isn't the point. The excitement comes from the realization that we are seeing a true film maker at work, using film to create a narrative that couldn't exist on the stage or the printed page of a novel. |
| Washington PostRita KempleyThere's so much to see and imagine, so many twists left to ponder in such a complicated and multi-layered tale. The temptation -- and some of the fun -- is to analyze Down By Law to death, to chew on it. Hyper-intellectualizing aside, it's pure pleasure for comedy connoisseurs. |
| Los Angeles TimesSheila BensonThe humor of Down by Law is marginally easier to describe than Stranger Than Paradise, but only because, by now, we have a small idea of Jarmusch's style. It's still a kind of humor that evaporates as you try to explain it. Also eluding description is the beauty, the street poetry and the precision of the images caught by Jarmusch and his cameraman, the great Robby Muller, whose black-and-white photography illuminated the early films of Wim Wenders. They have created a dream New Orleans, more succinct and more haunting than the city itself, and Lurie has set it to music. |
| Slant MagazineJoseph Jon LanthierDivorcing New Orleans from its stereotypes (there’s no ham-fisted Creole dialogue, no digs at the indigenous cuisine), the filmmaker imagines the boiling, boggy city as a purgatory for lost souls, spotted with cinephiliac mold. |