BEFORE: When I began this project, I didn't know where the path would lead me - I certainly didn't predict that I'd be focusing on mass murder or serial killers. I certainly don't want to glorify it or condone it in any way - but I have to acknowledge that it does exist. I'm sort of split on issues like gun control, since I don't think that violent films and video-games is a direct cause of real-world violence, but I also think that Hollywood could dial it back a bit.
Linking from "American Psycho", Chloe Sevigny connects back via "Zodiac" to Robert Downey Jr., who appears in tonight's film.
THE PLOT: Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.
AFTER: Right, it's the mass media that glorifies serial killers - but since this film depicts the mass media doing that, it's really this film that's the problem. Can we get a body count, here? Because I think we might have a new record. It's this sort of film that gives mass murder a bad name. So when does kill become overkill? Probably about 90 minutes in.
I had put this on a DVD with "Wild at Heart", and I think the two films have a lot in common. Two lovers go on the run after one gets out of prison, and mayhem ensues. So does overacting - they even somehow got Tommy Lee Jones, the industry's most stoic actor, to overemote with ridiculous gusto. With the strange camera angles and the really fake rear-projection driving scenes, this looks like what a shoot-em-up directed by David Lynch might resemble. I don't care if you're Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, or Steven Spielberg - fake is fake. They can say it's a stylistic choice to use low-rent effects, but I think that's a cop-out - it still looks like shite.
So it's the parents' fault, society's fault, the media's fault. Heck, even calling them "natural born" means that killing is somehow ingrained in their make-up, so it's God/evolution's fault as well. Funny how the murders are the fault of everyone except the people pulling the triggers. Whatever trauma happened to you as a kid, killing a diner full of people is never O.K.
And the film name-checks a bunch of other killers, from Manson and Ted Bundy down to O.J. Simpson - but there was never a time when mass killing was cool. Interesting, perhaps, in a morbid way - some might even say fascinating, but never cool. Maybe Court TV still makes a buck or two, but I haven't followed a major trial in quite some time. I had no idea who Amanda Knox was until recently, and I don't think the shooters were left standing in the incidents last year. For Pete's sake, if you're planning to kill a bunch of school kids and then yourself, do everyone a favor and skip right to the last step.
I would like to get off this topic as soon as I can - for fear of becoming desensitized. I've realized that the last film I watched without someone being killed in it was probably "Fitzwilly", back in late March. But there ain't no way through it but to do it...
Also starring Woody Harrelson (last seen in "Game Change"), Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Due Date"), Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Captain America: The First Avenger"), Tom Sizemore (last seen in "Red Planet"), Rodney Dangerfield, Edie McClurg (last seen in "Oh, God! Book II"), Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Wild at Heart"), Arliss Howard, with cameos from Balthazar Getty, Evan Handler, Adrien Brody (last seen in "Predators").
RATING: 3 out of 10 rattlesnakes
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