Roger Ebert, the film critic most palpably in love with his sense of perceived intellect, once again proves the phoniness of his objectivity as a reviewer by slamming movies like this one. There are some film critics like Ebert that when they are made uncomfortable by a movie, dismiss it without examining it, and call it sensationalistic. Mr. Ebert has done this with this one, which means this movie has done its job. The critic is too uncomfortable to examine the emotions this movie evokes, and uses pseudo-intellectualism to insulate himself from it. (Particularly in his hackneyed statement that the writer of the book made up contrived "statements" in the movie, instead of being real ones.)
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
The premise is simple; four businessmen leave the safety of their urban environment to go water rafting; they encounter a world outside their safe haven, that they cannot control. They eventually run into the wrong people, who despise them for simply existing and invading their territory, and their journey becomes a nightmare.
The movie is a study in how alienated man can become from his own species, how superficial the trappings of civilization are, and how civilized behavior will not help you survive when encountering simple animalistic behavior. The moral of the movie seems to be, there is no morality in survival, there is only survival. The men are graphically tortured, one raped, one murdered apparently by a hillbilly sniper trying to cover their tracks, and forced to commit murder to simply survive. Or is it simple self defense? They then realize that if they are honest and report the attacks that were made on them, they will be tried and executed simply for defending themselves.
They are therefore forced to lie, cover up and hide their experiences for life, even from their own families if they are to survive in the artificial "civilized" world they return to.
The movie places the characters in unfair circumstances they must survive in, and then further unfair circumstances as they must hide what happened to them to escape a place that will execute them if they tell the truth about defending themselves.
The unspoken message "stay in your own backyard or you'll be killed" is very depressing. But then, there are residents in Los Angeles that cannot even go into a different neighborhood without gangs targeting and killing them for no reason.
When a critic like Roger Ebert is too afraid to really examine the dark statements this movie makes emotionally, you know you have a movie that will move you and disturb you. The ironic thing is that now we have movies like Chain Saw Massacre III, Devil's Rejects, Friday the13th 1-9, etc, that make this movie's violence seem mild. However, the hatred, alienation and cruelty it examines will haunt and disturb you for years afterwards, long after meaningless drivel like the other movies mentioned are forgotten. In this day and age, that is no small accomplishment. Eight stars for me.
(cue banjo music....)
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
The premise is simple; four businessmen leave the safety of their urban environment to go water rafting; they encounter a world outside their safe haven, that they cannot control. They eventually run into the wrong people, who despise them for simply existing and invading their territory, and their journey becomes a nightmare.
The movie is a study in how alienated man can become from his own species, how superficial the trappings of civilization are, and how civilized behavior will not help you survive when encountering simple animalistic behavior. The moral of the movie seems to be, there is no morality in survival, there is only survival. The men are graphically tortured, one raped, one murdered apparently by a hillbilly sniper trying to cover their tracks, and forced to commit murder to simply survive. Or is it simple self defense? They then realize that if they are honest and report the attacks that were made on them, they will be tried and executed simply for defending themselves.
They are therefore forced to lie, cover up and hide their experiences for life, even from their own families if they are to survive in the artificial "civilized" world they return to.
The movie places the characters in unfair circumstances they must survive in, and then further unfair circumstances as they must hide what happened to them to escape a place that will execute them if they tell the truth about defending themselves.
The unspoken message "stay in your own backyard or you'll be killed" is very depressing. But then, there are residents in Los Angeles that cannot even go into a different neighborhood without gangs targeting and killing them for no reason.
When a critic like Roger Ebert is too afraid to really examine the dark statements this movie makes emotionally, you know you have a movie that will move you and disturb you. The ironic thing is that now we have movies like Chain Saw Massacre III, Devil's Rejects, Friday the13th 1-9, etc, that make this movie's violence seem mild. However, the hatred, alienation and cruelty it examines will haunt and disturb you for years afterwards, long after meaningless drivel like the other movies mentioned are forgotten. In this day and age, that is no small accomplishment. Eight stars for me.
(cue banjo music....)