 At its deepest level, this is a movie about the plight of black folk as made by rich Hollywood whites. I spent the last half of the movie waiting for the obligatory "nigger bitch" line. Thankfully, the movie did not disappoint. This is a movie written by good old Jim Cameron, who manages to create another cinematic suck-fest. Ralph Fiennes is the lead character, Lenny Nero, a man with aboslutely no redeeming characteristics. Well, he won't sell clips where people die, but he will buy them and edit that part out, so it's exactly a major stand or anything. He is an ex-cop, drummed out of the squad. Why? I couldn't tell you. Presumably because he has the tactical awareness of a sea cucumber. He is a dealer in clips that are recorded, complete with visual, sound, tactile stimulus etc. Apparantly "you can feel the adrenaline pumping" as you run from the cops, dyke it out, or whatever the person wearing the recorder was doing. His friend, Tom Sizemore, playing Meatloaf is also an ex-cop, now a PI. He has been hired to follow Juliette Lewis, playing Faith, Nero's big love. He met her when she was giving out twenty dollar blowjobs, apparantly before she realized if she moved in with someone, she only had to screw one guy, and got room and board. She is in this movie a worthless whore who makes crappy music, and sings it like it rips out her soul to get so in touch with her feelings. Well, actually, the music is PJ Harvey, and from what I hear, she performs the same way, so maybe I can't fault Juliette Lewis. Anyway, the music is slow, and tortured, and then it gets heavy for the chorus, and it is still tortured. Personally, it reminds me of Alannis Morisette + co. who make songs about being a whore, and life sucks cause I screw so many guys and they tell me I'm a whore.... To quote this movie, "the only time a whore should open her mouth is when she's giving head." Back to the movie. Meatloaf is following Faith, who has left Nero for Philo Gant, a record guy of some kind who manages Jeriko 1, a black rapper, with no talent, and nothing original to say. The movie takes place in 1999, and Jeriko 1 is rehashing ground plowed by Ice T, NWA, and Public Enemy in the 80's. Supposedly this is so shocking and threatening to the man, that the man has him killed. Jeriko 1 gets pulled over with a friend and two whores(yes, almost all the girls in this movie are whores, in fact, the black chick is the only one who's not). The cops make them get out of the car, Jeriko 1 calls the cop RoboSteckler, says he's the cop's worst nightmare, "a nigga with enough political juice to squash you like a stinkbug." The cop, apparantly horrified by the bad dialogue shoots him in the head. One of the whores is wearing a recording thing, and gets the whole thing on disc. She's friends with Nero and faith, and tries to get the disk to him. Everything else is exactly as you'd expect, with the surprises being unsurprising, and the dialog maintaining its level of crap. Two things I haven't mentioned are Mace, the black sidekick, a limo driver, and "security consultant, trained in personal combat." This means she gets to kick ass. She also is the only moral character in the movie, well, at least the only one who seems to notice that Nero is hooked on his own product. She gives him the that stuff is ruining your life speech, complete with telling him he needs to worry about reality, not playback. She is also the one who wants to get the clip of Jeriko 1 out, even though it will cause riots. She says "it's gonna change a lot of things that need changin." She is about as stereotypical as Mario van Peebles in Heartbreak Ridge, but in the other way. She's the most capable one in the movie, the most moral one, the one who kicks the most ass, etc. She loves her kid and tries to raise him right, even though his daddy's in prison. It's obvious that her and Nero are gonna fall in love, but he's such a scumbag, and a whiner, and pathetically in love with a whore who left him, and who's new boyfriend has him beaten up, that I really don't care. In fact, that might be this movies biggest flaw, the characters suck. I didn't care about a single one of them, and in fact, I hoped that the big dawn of the millenium subplot would in fact be the end of the world, killing them all. The other thing about this movie was the fact that there was nothing original about it. The atmosphere was a poor attempt at Blade Runner, and the most shocking seen of the movie, a rape where the output of one guys recorder is stuck into the input of the victim(in more ways than one), was done about 100 times better in City of Lost Children. All in all, this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I don't say that lightly. The fact that some people see this movie as an instant "cult" classic, can only be explained by the phenomenon that makes Hanson and Marilyn Manson sucesses. About the author: Composed of two layers of phospho-lipids oriented head tail-tail head. amembrane@hotmail.com You may read another review, submit your own, or return home. |
