SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “Shop Talk.” New Republic 215, nos. 12-13 (16 September 1996): 28-9.

In the following review, Kauffmann criticizes the casting choices for the film version of American Buffalo, but provides a positive assessment of the work overall.

Obviously the one-set play with very few characters is not suitable for filming—except that, like so many obvious wisdoms, it's untrue. Precepts bend to talent. Stevie and The Caretaker and My Dinner with André, all made from small-scale theater works, are valuable films. American Buffalo is another.

David Mamet made the screen adaptation of his play and has done only a little physical “opening up”: most of the film takes place where the play does, in Don's Resale Shop, a junk shop crammed with all kinds of odds and ends. One of the play's fascinations is that it seems to put that shop under a microscope. A minuscule speck of the...