When a film should be rated "X" and Isn't

Rating: 4/10 (4 December 2004)

Like most films I've seen that upset or disgust me greatly, I am going to buy the Patrick Marber play, "Closer," to see just how close Mike Nichols & Marber got. What I'm really hoping to see in the play is more about the humanity underlying these sexual neanderthals. The word "love" is used in the film. LOVE is non-existent in it. These 4 people play sexual ring-a-round-a rosy with each other and think the word "commitment" is spelled the old anglo-saxon "f" way.
And maybe "f" is what they are basically committed to.
There's some line about "truth" in the movie (in my head I kept hearing Jack Nicholson say, "You can't handle the truth") and this is a movie in which there is little if any truth among the sexual predators. The only "truth" comes as a semi-surprise at the end of the movie. I don't want to be a spoiler so you'll have to sit through the whole, nauseating mess to find what seemed to me to be the only "truth" in this ugly, sometimes funny - although not meaning to be, exercise in pathetically unfulfilling lust. The acting sufficed.
Oh Mike Nichols what in hell are you crying out for?