Meet Joe Black

Acensbart

Excellent but underrated film

Taraparain

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

StyleSk8r

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Zlatica

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Paul J. Nemecek

In the recent thriller The Edge, Anthony Hopkins played a wealthy businessman who is transformed by a harrowing encounter with death. In Meet Joe Black, Anthony Hopkins plays Bill, a similar character confronting similar themes, but with a very different twist. Here he meets Death as played by Brad Pitt. Death informs Bill that he wants to see what life is like and he wants Bill to teach him. So long as Death is interested and learning, Bill gets more time. When Bill has to introduce Death to his family at dinner, he fumbles around for a name, eventually coming up with Joe Black.This is hardly the first film to depict bargains with Death. In Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal the allegorical figure of death (complete with shroud) is challenged to a game of chess. His intended victim hopes to forestall the inevitable. Bergman's Death character is reprised in Woody Allen's Love and Death, The Last Action Hero, and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.