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Smoke Review: A refreshingly appointed slice-of-life ode to Brooklyn, New York, Wayne Wang's low-key drama is quietly enchanting in its refusal to trump up its subject matter, which includes drugs, adoption and misanthropic writers. Everything is presented in a matter-of-fact manner, stemming, it seems, from writer-novelist Paul Auster's credible and detailed screenplay, which doesn't offer tidy solutions for its characters' conflicts. William Hurt and Harvey Keitel marvelously inhabit the film's almost-mystical portrayal of its beloved borough. Keitel's lengthy and stunningly delivered monologue near the close of the film almost singularly makes the whole picture something special. Much of the cast and filmmakers reunited for a largely improvised (and less successful) "sequel," entitled Blue in the Face, which adopted a looser, less-structured attitude, but retains many of the same characters and locations. Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

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