I believe I have never seen a play acted out and taped for television in front of a live studio audience before, I didn't even know it was a play before I hit the button to watch it - I just thought it was a Bruce Willis movie I somehow overlooked because I'm pretty familiar with his filmography and True West didn't ring a bell to me but once I started watching... oh my.
I know Bruce is a good actor, and despite his works from the last ten years I still believe so. But here he shows a whole other side of his abilities, he shows that he really is a great actor if he puts his soul into what he's doing.
True West is a story of two brothers: Lee, down on his luck bum drinking a new can of beer every two minutes, and Austin, a successful screenwriter in the middle of his new movie deal. Lee is jealous of his younger brother so he tries to make it as a screenwriter too which birthes a wave of jealousy in Austin as well when both of them go off the rails on the edge of insanity and it all snowballs into a huge mess of things down at their mother's kitchen.
Bruce Willis and Chad Smith's duo is uncanny, chemical and very life-like, although with some over the top shouting and throwing stuff around that I didn't really thought was that necessary but they make it seem authentic enough so much so that I don't really know whether to laugh at the whole situation they got themselves into or call the police. Their quarrels, bickering and back and forth fast dialogues are the highlight of this little play in my apartment and acting is absolutely top notch from both of them.
Relatives drive each other crazy all the time, it's in their nature - they're bonded by blood in it - but the most important thing here is that along with arguing there must be some place left for love too, and Lee and Austin surely have that, buried deep beneath twenty thousand layers of beer in them.
