In a vacuum, folks.

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2011)

This movie reminds me of Faye Grimm in that it fails me to see why it is so highly rated by a particular (though seemingly prolific) sub-group of film-goers: laboring under the self-congratulating and somewhat baffling illusion of being party to some kind of intellectual elite . . . culturally above the masses in their taste for 'something different'. . . which to me seems to be a product that is mainly derivative and overly-effected and serious to the point of unintentional irony.
I watch movies such as this one and the above-mentioned while wondering if maybe the brilliance is in the fact that it is some elaborate inside joke merely poking fun at itself. Especially because . . . the actors . . . well, they seem to be going along with it . . . and they're highly skilled and . . . why did they pick this movie? Is there something missing? Will I have to watch it again in ten years and kick myself for my inability to recognize truly great films for what they are? But then after perusing the web while looking into Faye Grimm, looking for the cult-classic logic, the piece of the story that I seem to be missing, and all I come across is a bunch of bloated ramblings about the brilliance of the director/writer/whomever . . . it's the kind of art that loves to talk about itself and how great and obscure and canonical it is, and then talk about itself some more.
The tough part is sussing out the talent in spite of the nausea induced by exposure to ego-loving art. Such as with this film, there were some excellent parts, the car chases, the wheel-man back story, the actors, the gruesome death scenes, bits and pieces are artfully captured and ideas are not without merit. But it reminds me of a classroom full of precocious film students who can't seem to get out of their own way for the sake of excessive self-love and unrealistic delusions of grandeur. I can almost hear their thinking ('yeah, we'll do some vintage 80s homage via opening credit music and font selection' . . . and is purposeful construction of an obvious but irrelevant atmosphere what constitutes film-noir? I truly am an idiot.) But then there's a large following which seems to get something that I so clearly seem to miss; maybe I'm just classist in the the reverse: I'll take a bad/flashy/no brainer/unoriginal movie when it doesn't try to be anything other than what it is: unremarkable fodder for the masses - hey, I'll take it (well, sometimes, in small doses and with great pleasure) but a pretentiously bad movie that fails to see itself for what it is? bleh.