AFI Dallas International Film Festival - ‘Noise’

(USA, 2007, 90 mins)

Directed By: Henry Bean
Cast: Tim Robbins, Bridget Moynahan, William Hurt

Henry Bean won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2002 with The Believer, a stunning portrait of a young Jewish man who became a determined neo Nazi. Bean's follow-up feature deals with another articulate intellectual New Yorker with a fanatical gripe. This time, the campaign is against car alarms, and the tone is tragic-comic instead of anguished.

David (Tim Robbins) is a successful lawyer who can’t stand the fact that Manhattan is a place where it’s too noisy to get a good night’s sleep, listen to his wife play classical music, or even make love. Every time he hears a car alarm going off, he swings into action. His acts of vandalism generate no end of grief from his wife (Bridget Moynahan), and make him politically controversial when he engages the ire of the city’s arrogant mayor (a sublime William Hurt).

Noise is a complete rarity in American movies today: a comedy of ideas.

Information from the AFI website