Tin Men

Delivery Time: 7 to 15 Working Days Format: DVD

Cruise back to Baltimore 1963, to the time and turf of a rare American breed: the "tin man" (aluminum siding salesman). Two less-than-honest rivals in the tin game (Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito) meet in a fender bender, but their bruised egos and quick tempers turn the minor accident into a major vendetta against each other's symbols of success -- their prized Cadillacs. In what would seem to be a coup de grace, Dreyfuss decides to seduce DeVito's neglected wife (Barbara Hershey), but this romantic maneuver causes nonstop twists and turns to both the heart and the funnybone. With a supporting cast that's absolutely classic and music by The Fine Young Cannibals, TIN MEN sounds as good as it looks!
Tin Men, the second in Barry Levinson's ongoing film series about his native Baltimore in the 1950s and '60s, focuses on a pair of competing aluminum-siding salesman at a point when the industry was loaded with scam artists. Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito play rivals who get involved in a fender-bender that quickly escalates from a minor argument into an all-out war, as they begin pulling practical jokes on each other. Dreyfuss takes it too far, however, when he sets out to seduce DeVito's unhappy wife (Barbara Hershey) and winds up falling in love with her. Much of the humor here comes from writer-director Levinson's keen ear for the way these people talk--and what they talk about (like the discussion of why four men are living together without women on the Ponderosa in Bonanza). Beside the leads, the cast includes a great host of character actors, including Jackie Gayle, Bruno Kirby, John Mahoney, and J.T. Walsh. Others in Levinson's body of Baltimore films are Diner, Avalon, and the most recent, Liberty Heights. -- Marshall Fine