Criterion Collection: Husbands

The trailblazing independent auteur John Cassavetes pushes his raw uncompromising emotional realism to it s limit in this unflinching portrait of masculinity in crisis. Cassavetes joins Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk both of whom would become key collaborators of the director s playing a trio of middle-aged Long Island family men who following the sudden death of their best friend channel their grief into an epic multiday bender that takes them from Manhattan to London in a desperate debauched quest to feel alive. By turns painfully funny and woundingly perceptive this self-described comedy about life death and freedom stands as perhaps the most fearless harrowingly honest deconstruction of American manhood ever committed to film.