Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
倒是很喜欢谢谢你的诞生那一段表现各个人物的私心，以及警察变“掮客”的做法，但整体实在太无聊了，我不愿相信这个温情又略洒狗血的剧情是是枝裕和写的，只延续破碎家庭这个概念实在没法让人满意吧。自我致敬也就算了，为啥还要致敬白日焰火的摩天轮和过春天的警察从天而降？？？我的姐姐我就不提了，要不是枝裕和干脆来中国拍个骗眼泪的片子算了
舒适圈挺好的，能一辈子待着也是一种幸福。我们不能选择自己的出生，却能为他人的出生变成更好的自己。
22_088。因为是日本导演拍韩国电影吗，整体显现一种“水土不服”的感觉，没有打动我是真的。公路电影的优点没有出来，裴斗娜一条也是否有点多余？
从来没有喜欢过是枝裕和，包括海街和小偷。现在我终于明白了，对社会失望却对人温情的他，只适合彻头彻尾的童话，并在童话中探讨没有结论的社会/哲理议题。在用「父忧母难」形容新生命的诞生并情感道德双重绑架了子女长达千年的东亚社会，「感谢你被我生出来」是颠覆性的宣言，也是我的泪崩点。
3.5星，前面觉得尼古拉斯凯奇自己演自己这个创意很有意思，到后面主线剧情反而俗了。凯奇还是那么疯，是让人想到《我心狂野》的那种疯。啊我是真的不喜欢《帕丁顿熊2》TAT
@GoldenScene 是枝裕和真的不擅长处理高度戏剧化的剧本和如此密集的戏剧冲突，非常聒噪…
出乎意料的好。好几个片段是近期看电影笑得最大声的时候，同时还穿插着各种Meta元素和电影梗太过瘾了。真心希望尼古拉斯凯奇一切都好。
凯奇终于拍了一部不那么烂的片子，而且剧本编写竟然还很特别，片里片外，有点傻傻分不清。中间回顾了很多凯奇以前片子的梗，但如果没字幕组做提示的话，可能也只有他自己记得了……
感觉节奏不太好，差几口气。这创意本应该更好一些。
是枝裕和重复自己《小偷家族》里同样的命题——拼凑起的家庭是否也有真挚的感情，残破的角落里是否也能开出绚丽的花朵。其实每个人都是互相对应，充斥着难以言说的经历，生活底层的他们在人性的边缘徘徊，追踪的警察在人性与职责之间挣扎；男二在与抛弃孩子的女主的经历中，与抛弃自己的母亲和解；而女主在罪恶感与责任感之间渴望给孩子一个最好的家。“谢谢你来到这世上”也许是最温存的祝福。好的地方是一如既往的，其实并没有水土不服，只是在重复自己，以致于看之前就猜到大致剧情走向了。
想知道如果凱奇看完劇本以後不同意出演，導演會怎麼辦
有点夹生饭，并不是所有土壤都可以嫁接日式的温吞，加上每个人都没怎么入戏，这个戛纳影帝是闭着眼给的吧
不觉得是枝裕和这片垮了。温情和善良，无论何时、拍了多少次，都不应该过时。尤其真实世界，比电影里更冰冷、肮脏的时候。
卖孩子的临时团伙的旅行生活。看完后感觉并没有那么惊艳，也确实是导演是枝裕和一贯的风格，平静却又温暖人心。也有点像翻版的《小偷家族》，只不过“小偷”变成了贩卖人口“掮客”
本片為是枝裕和赴韓國拍攝的韓語片，被認為是枝裕和的《小偷家族》的姊妹篇，但實際並沒有《小偷家族》一般描繪沒有血緣關係的一群人構成家庭倫理劇的戲劇元素，而是以遺棄與販賣兒童為題材，探索當中的是非道德。是枝裕和此片野心頗大，遠比一般犯罪片來得複雜，他沒有美化任何一方的行動，埋伏在暗處救嬰兒的警察，或者變賣嬰兒的“經紀人”，他們行為都夾雜了不太純粹的功利與私慾。是枝裕和亦刻意保持一定的距離，利用輕快的配樂以及忍俊不禁的情節，淡化了賣嬰的悲劇，相比《小偷家族》中還是對偷竊這種公眾行為保持著一定的道德底線批判，此片的賣嬰行動存在更多灰色地帶（像是有一群富人夫婦誠心渴望收養嬰兒，證明無情之舉背後也有隱藏的人性善美），而且是枝裕和亦克服了韓國拍攝語言不通的障礙，更展現出一種更簡潔且高超的影像敘事技巧。
前三分之二，不，应该是前四分之三都很有意思，但是最后就跟预算不足了一样，一泻千里。当年看到这个case的时候我还很惊喜凯奇终于要接一部旷世奇作了，结果还是有些失望，到底什么时候才能不落俗套的来一部翻身之作啊！
Mega. “可惜”都不至于的地步，就是失望。洗车场这种俗气煽情的桥段，和是枝裕和之前作品中细腻的感动相比，一个天上一个地下。丽姐是转型比较成功的吧，但是不懂怎么就能算“影后人选”了，还是在“认真演戏”的感觉，戏份最重最鲜明超过宋康昊，但是换个人来演也不会更好我觉得，剧作上没有更多发挥空间了，不值得。
像是是枝裕和导演的铁粉，模仿了一个《小偷家族》元素的命题作业。大导演脱离了母语创作环境，就算视听层面上过关，片子还是呈现悬浮的状态，很难沉下来，主题上真正的触及心灵，只剩下观感还可以的技巧展示。
一位叫做凯奇的中年大叔过气演员写给自己的情书，难得将中年危机拍得这么好玩儿，过程如此欢乐，充满自黑和黑色幽默，让懂的观众不断会心微笑或开怀大笑，结局还是不能免俗地回归到漂亮国家庭至上主义的主流价值观的大团圆结局上，个人觉得既然踏上了让凯奇自己演自己，还有个年轻版的虚拟自己跟自己不断对话，整部影片还可以玩得在“飞”一点，脑洞还可以再大一点，自嘲和反讽还可以再辛辣一点。总之算是近期难得一见的一部构思颇有创意、也充满致敬情怀的欢乐片。
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