Just a movie, people ... a pretty good one but not a great one

Rating: 7/10 (6 July 2005)

Looking at the previous reviews and the message boards, it looked like some people were offended by the moral universe occupied by the characters in the movie. You'd think these people would recognize a morality play when they see one! This movie is clearly a cautionary tale, a fulfillment of the old proverb, "if you can't be an example, at least be a warning." The Greeks were writing stories like this over 2000 years ago, full of murder and mayhem and deceit, of people having sex with their mothers and poking their eyes out. Yet I haven't heard the "Christian" conservatives getting all worked up about THAT.
Of course these characters' behavior was offensive. That was the point of the movie. We watch as the brazen disregard of moral laws wreaks tragedy on stage or on screen, thinking to ourselves "boy, glad I'm not that screwed up" (or in some cases "boy, I'm really screwed up"), and then we walk out of the theater vowing to behave better than that. Didn't we all learn this in 10th grade literature class? Anyway, to me this movie was about trust, honesty and deception. This was most clearly played out in the strip club scene, but it was a central theme throughout. At times a character would show an incredible level of trust in one of the others, often in a completely amazing and charming way. Sometimes this trust was rewarded, and sometimes it was violated. At times one of the characters would break another's trust through deception in a completely vile way, sometimes over a long period of time. At times we in the audience would find that we ourselves had been deceived by one of the characters. This plays out especially well in a scene near the end that reverses several of our earlier notions of who was deceiving whom, and when.
The old adage, "what a tangled web we weave, when we endeavor to deceive" is illustrated vividly here. The clear message is: don't behave this way, folks. And don't get tangled up with someone who does). I know some have expressed amazement that anyone would live like this. Is it any more surprising than finding out there are people who rape or murder others, molest children, or start wars needlessly? Most people aren't like this, but there are those who act without conscience, either continuously or at convenient times. This story sets out to illustrate the damage they can cause.
After setting that record straight, I have to say that although the acting was fantastic all around, I thought the script and dialogue were a bit flat in places, and this film just didn't grip me as well as it should have. 7/10.