Mamet is a writer who turns off some audiences, and almost everything that might bother them is in Edmond: foul language, raging machismo, violence and seemingly bigoted tirades. But almost everything audiences like about him is there too: candor, suspense, ideas, crackling slang, vivid characters.

Edmond would probably be completely unapproachable were it not spiked with so much dark wit, much of it coming from Macy's painful naïveté and cheapness, which comes through in negotiations with various women of the night.

It's hilarious, and contains some of Mamet's best dialogue. And that somehow, by making a racist, murderous, Everycreep his protagonist, Mamet is able to produce some of his most penetrating psychological and spiritual insights.

While the episodic script feels fragmented, Macy's consistency unifies Edmond's journey.

It manages, in the course of a single tersely delineated story, to say more about the dark pathology of American racism than any five character arcs in "Crash." So go, by all means, but be prepared to take a beating.

In Mamet's understanding, straight white maleness is the most powerful weapon such men have. It can also be illusory, which is why the last scenes of Edmond are so touching.

Admirers of the author will find in Edmond all the elements that turned Mamet into a favorite.

Mr. Macy, a master at playing sticks of human dynamite in mild-mannered camouflage, gives the nerviest screen performance of his career.

We're in David Mamet World. William H. Macy -- the quintessential player of Mamet men in all their impacted rage -- stars in this claustrophobic adaptation.

Written in the aftermath of a bitter divorce, Mamet's paranoid rant -- an explosion of middle-aged, white-collar, white-men's rage at losing ground to everyone, from women, hustlers, African Americans and homosexuals to the younger generation nipping at their heels -- is as bilious as ever, but time has overtaken and defanged it.

It may be too bleak for most.

Depressing, disgusting, and dated, Edmond is worth braving to experience America's best-known serious playwright at his most gruesomely undiluted.

This, to put it mildly, is new terrain for Macy, and his journey--from Arthur Miller, as it were, to Céline and Dostoyevsky--does not always convince.

From the beginning, Edmond is too self-absorbed for us to care much about his fate, but like the proverbial train wreck, you can't tear your eyes - or your ears - away from the spectacle.