Back before he was The David Mamet, a struggling playwright in Chicago scribbled out this groundbreaking work of trust and deceit. It established the "trademark" Mamet style of dialogue (called "eloquent stammering" by a critic at the time) and played like a locked closet full of backbiting hounds. When poverty gets so extreme that there is no one to feed off but your own kind is when the story starts, and from there wanders into the dark corners of the human psyche. Con erodes into cheat and friendship dissolves into necessity as Franz and Hoffman are terrifying in their ferocity. I'm not talking the "ooh! look how much fun we're having jumping in our chairs while we eat our popcorn in this nice safe theater where the monsters aren't" scary. I mean the kind that makes you look twice at everyone you see for weeks on end. For fans of his work this is a must.
Review of American Buffalo
