Sometimes a strong warning can be the best recommendation for a difficult movie, and here's a perfect example: beginning with a vicious back alley beating of a wayward sailor and ending, 100 minutes later, with a marathon gang rape of drunken whore Jennifer Jason Leigh. It took more then 25 years for Hubert Selby Jr.'s controversial novel to reach the big screen, but maybe the most surprising fact about this uncompromising adaptation is that it was made at all.
Selby's title says it best: this truly is the end of the line, a dead-end world with no hope for escape. The pessimism of the novel may be softened on screen by the distance now from its 1952 setting, but the claustrophobic atmosphere is no less compelling, not unlike a dark cousin to 'American Graffiti', transplanted to a midnight wasteland of frustrated libido and labor unrest. The film is not without a certain gutter pathos, but even with a semi-optimistic ending it's not something to approach lightly.
Selby's title says it best: this truly is the end of the line, a dead-end world with no hope for escape. The pessimism of the novel may be softened on screen by the distance now from its 1952 setting, but the claustrophobic atmosphere is no less compelling, not unlike a dark cousin to 'American Graffiti', transplanted to a midnight wasteland of frustrated libido and labor unrest. The film is not without a certain gutter pathos, but even with a semi-optimistic ending it's not something to approach lightly.