Reviews

This movie was perhaps the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. During the rape/beating scene and the murder scene I had to mute the television and look away. I was so devastated and livid afterwards and those feelings have lingered for a week.

I am a performing artist, and I can understand that the ideas that a writer or director presents in a film, play, or other medium do not necessarily represent his/her viewpoints. But the question that kept pounding in my head throughout and after watching this film was WHY?

What can possibly be the point of the two obscenely graphic violent scenes in this movie? Why write this? Why shoot it? Why make actors portray it? To desensitize us to violence? Hardly. To de-glorify acts of violence? Well, these scenes are certainly less than glorious, but I am lost on any possible larger meaning. In a movie like Saving Private Ryan the creators show war in all its bloody realism in the hopes of de-glorifying what so many other films make look patriotic, noble, black and white. But did anyone think that rape or murder was glorious before watching this film?

Perhaps they did it to drive the plot? That can't be, since due to the reverse order of the film we hear about the young woman being raped and attacked and see her after it happens BEFORE we see the actual rape. We can imagine the actual attack with one look at her coma-stricken body - we absolutely do not need to see it. The only reason I can imagine that the director decides to show us this scene is to make the audience empathetic with the men when they seek revenge. But THEY do not see the actual attack - so they are basing their actions solely on her appearance after the attack. That's all we, the audience, would have needed to see.

The reverse plotline order is only interesting for the first few scenes and seems more tacked on rather than an intrinsic part of the movie. And is all of the explicit gay bashing language at the beginning of the film really necessary, not to mention all of the graphic and extreme gay club activities? They don't add anything to the film.

As a woman watching this movie, I have no idea what the director intended for me to come away with. I ended up feeling extremely angry, scared to ever walk alone, and like getting my blackbelt in karate would be an excellent idea.

Perhaps my biggest complaint it that the explanation of the film on the box was not more accurate. This is hardly a "sexy thriller."