This is a vignettes-from-the-early-life-of-the-writer-type movie. You know, you've seen 'em: the writer getting all nostalgic about his slum beginnings in garret rooms, and the rich characters of the poor people he knew. Barfly plays a variation on this theme in that it homes in on the slurred, blurred lives of downtown alcoholics, frequenting cheap bars whenever and wherever they can get cheap credit. Rourke, coming on like a male Mae West, gives another of his low-life, designer stubble studies as the writer. Faye Dunaway is good, too, as the slightly higher-class lush who takes him under her wing and occasionally beats his brains out. He takes on the bartender (Sylvester Stallone's brother Frank) in a nightly brawl, and his seedy, smelly lifestyle is captured by the director down to the last peeling flap on the wallpaper. Some of this is entertaining, some indulgent, some merely tedious. About what you'd expect from leaves from the author's - in this case Charles Bukowski - early days.

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