Buffalo '66 is a masterpiece musical by the genius filmmaker Vincent Gallo. Mickey Rourke has a small but key part as The Bookie.

First of all, the movie is unique in many ways. It's unique in that it's not influenced by cinema. Vincent Gallo works from within a personal aesthetic he's cultivated all his life that runs like a through line in his work. It's also unique in how it's shot on Kodak Ektachrome 35 mm Reversal film: Kodak had to make a special batch just for Buffalo '66, as it had never been used before as a replacement for negative film. It was a hassle, but Vincent insisted on using a film stock that would have resonance with the 16 mm Reversal film they used for the football cinematography that Billy would've watched with his mom growing up in Buffalo. There's an interesting dichotomy here in the way the use of Reversal film stock enhances the realism of portraying Billy's memories, but at the same time, the memories themselves are simulacra of his real life. Hence every aspect of the aesthetic has a fairy-tale quality to it, from Billy's red shoes to how outrageously good Layla looks: it is the way these things appear to Billy in his memories, which are exaggerated representations of the objective reality in which his experiences took place.
 

Film language and sensibility are integrated on all levels of the film to show us the way Billy perceives and remembers his world. Billy doesn't want to be looked at up close, which is reflected in the visual style of cutting from tighter shots back to wide-shots or long-shots. Billy's 5-page monologue is filmed only on Layla, because it's her reaction to it that is central to the scene - something only Vincent's genius editor Curtiss Clayton understood. It's a testament to Vincent's boldness as a director to stay true to his singular point of view without letting himself be strayed from the path by other people involved in the movie - a rare quality among directors. This is why Vincent's movies have soul.

Now that we've analyzed the basic conceptual framework of the movie's visual style, let's take a closer look at the story about a Lonely Boy who feels unloved by his parents, and tries in vain to make them love him.

Billy calls up a 10.000 dollar bet on Buffalo to win the Superbowl. But Scott Woods misses the field goal. And Billy doesn't have the money to cover his bet. Vincent had to cast someone bad ass for the part of The Bookie collecting Billy's debt, and originally had his uncle in mind for the role, but went for ?ber-bad ass Mickey Rourke instead. As Vincent told E! True Hollywood Story, 'To bring Mickey on to your set your first day of shooting your 1.5 million dollar film - that was bad ass! ... He's always unknowing, he's always discovering, he's always spontaneous; every take is different, every line is different.' The collaboration proved to be mutually beneficial financially as well, as Vincent told Flux, 'I think Mickey initially did the film for the money, because I paid him out of my own money. I think after, Mickey and I have become very close friends and he was a very fine actor and a very professional person, but we met in a very professional way, not in a personal way', and TV Now, 'Anytime you have a cast like that, especially somebody like Mickey Rourke, you can basically guarantee that you'll be showing in Europe.'

Vincent shot Mickey's character as an enigma, because Mickey has the charisma to pull that off. He figured out a camera move where we never see The Bookie enter or exit the scene. The Bookie talks about himself in the 3rd person, 'This Bookie got so sick of him [Billy] and everybody's excuses ... and the only way he could make himself feel better was to do bad things... to do very, very bad things to the excuse maker and very, very bad things to the excuse maker's mother and father.' The Bookie tells Billy that to prevent this from happening, he's got to confess the crime of which someone else is accused, to free 'the innocent man'. Billy accepts to be a fall guy for The Bookie, in order to protect his parents.

Billy convinces himself in jail that Scott Woods got paid money to miss the field goal on purpose, and blames him for ruining his life, refusing to take responsibility for his own actions in the process. He plans to kill Woods out of revenge, and to commit suicide afterwards. There's a political dimension to this, as Vincent firmly believes in taking responsibility for one's own actions; he uses Billy's character to show the mechanism of what happens when people don't do that. This is why critics who say that Billy Brown (and indeed, the movie) is autobiographical, completely miss the point. The parents are the only autobiographical aspect of the movie, as they're based on Vincent's own parents.

Released from jail, and on his way to meet his parents, Billy kidnaps a girl, Layla, to act as the wife he's been bragging about to them, to make them proud of him. But in return, they barely register his existence. It takes Billy the whole of the movie to realize that no matter what he'll ever do, it's not going to change his parents' basic unloving, uncaring nature towards him (the character doesn't evolve until the very end of the movie). In his impossible quest for the love of his parents, he ends up finding that love is indeed possible between him and Layla. There's a very romantic message here: 2 people might not be perfect, but they can be perfect for each other.

The breakdown in the bathroom at Denny's is heavy, with Billy crying 'I don't wanna live' while the cries of Vincent's composition 'A Wet Cleaner' exactly echo the feeling of emptiness in the scene. Seldomly in cinema has image and soundtrack merged in such perfect unison. 'With Smiles & Smiles & Smiles', another classic Gallo composition, again perfectly matches the feeling of the aftermath following such an emotional scene. This kind of perfect use of music helps the movie become an emotional rollercoaster ride.

Towards the end of the movie, when Billy goes to Scott Woods Live Solid Gold Sexxotic Dancers Nightclub to take revenge on Scott Woods, he has an epiphany. In a dazzling display of cinematic virtuosity, we see how Billy remembers seeing a flashforward at that moment of how his parents wouldn't give a damn if he killed himself. He realizes he has to take responsibility for his own life, instead of ducking it by finger pointing at Scott Woods and feeling victimized by his parents. He decides to not give up on the love he has with Layla. After having played his father for the whole duration of the movie up until that moment, Vincent plays himself 'on a very good day' in the last few scenes, getting a heart-shaped cookie for Layla and taking his life into his own hands. It's a beautiful moment. And on that life-affirming note, Buffalo '66 ends.