American Beauty (1999)

American Beauty (1999)

Release Date: 1 October 1999 (USA)
Quality: DVDRip
Language: English
Runtime: 122 min
Director: Sam Mendes
Movie Info: IMDb
Company: DreamWorks SKG, Jinks/Cohen Company
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari
Genre: Drama
Watch: Trailer
Size: 700MB

Plot: Lester Burnham (Spacey) is a 42-year-old father and advertising executive who serves as the film's narrator. Lester's family life is messy his wife Carolyn (Bening) is an ambitious realtor who feels that she is unsuccessful at fulfilling her potential, and his 16-year-old daughter Jane (Birch) is unhappy and struggling with self-esteem issues. Lester himself is a self-described loser: boring, faceless and easy to forget. Lester is reinvigorated, however, when he meets Jane's friend and classmate Angela Hayes (Suvari) at a high school basketball game. Lester immediately develops an obvious infatuation with Angela, much to his daughter's embarrassment. Throughout the film, Lester has fantasies involving a sexually aggressive Angela and red rose petals. The Burnhams' new neighbors are Col. Frank Fitts, USMC (Cooper), his distracted wife Barbara (Janney), and his camcorder-obsessed son Ricky (Bentley). When confronted with the gay couple living two doors down, Col. Fitts displays a distinctly bigoted attitude.

Over the course of a few days, each of the Burnhams individually makes a life-changing choice. Carolyn meets real estate rival Buddy Kane for a business lunch and ends up beginning an affair with him, and later takes up gun lessons. Lester blackmails his boss for $60,000, quits his job, and takes up low-pressure employment as a burger-flipper at a fast food chain. He continues to liberate himself by trading in his Toyota Camry for his dream car, a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, starts working out to impress Angela, and starts smoking a genetically enhanced form of marijuana. Jane, while growing distant from Angela, develops a romantic relationship with Ricky, having bonded over what he considers to be his most beautiful camcorder footage he has ever filmed, that of a plastic grocery bag dancing in the wind. Ricky himself quickly befriends Lester and secretly acts as Lester's marijuana supplier.

Col. Fitts, concerned over the growing relationship between Lester and Ricky, roots through his son's possessions, finding footage of Lester working out in the nude (captured by chance while Ricky was filming Jane through her bedroom window)- slowly bringing him to the conclusion that his son is gay. Buddy and Carolyn are found out by Lester, who seems to be completely unfazed by his wife's infidelity. Carolyn, who is almost more devastated by Lester's indifference than by her being exposed as an adulteress, is further dismayed when Buddy reacts by breaking off the affair. As evening falls, Ricky returns home to find his father waiting for him with fists and vitriol, having mistaken his drug rendezvous with Lester for a sexual affair. Realising this as an opportunity for freedom, Ricky falsely agrees that he is gay and goads his violent father until he is thrown out. Ricky rushes to Jane's house and asks her to flee with him to New York City - something she agrees to, much to the dismay of Angela, who quickly protests. Ricky shoots her down with her deepest fear: that she is boring and completely ordinary. Broken and dismayed, Angela storms out of the room, leaving Jane and Ricky to concile.