terrible casting, wrong-headed artistic concept

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2003)

You know those ads where they smash up a brand new car to demonstrate how safe it is? It catches your attention, but also makes you feel a little sick for the waste of a perfectly good car. But what about a director, a pure artist, who has such resources? Dead bodies, stabbed, crushed, burning and bleeding bodies are not in themselves amusing. The purpose of civilization (and it's voice of reason, ART) is to *attempt* to shift our gaze from the ugliness which underlies human existence, toward the bigger and higher picture of human aspirations. (At least in my opinion.) This movie attempts the opposite. Even if New York weren't a renowned stinkhole anyway, we hardly want to know about the stinking horror that was its real history, do we? If we did, we'd all be researching history and trading pictures of mutilated corpses. (Oh, maybe Hollywood movie moguls live in a more serene world, perhaps that's it.) Anyway there is no higher purpose or vision in this movie. The difference between this and a gory slasher flick is that most slasher flicks have a sense of humor and don't take themselves seriously. This movie takes itself seriously ... though in a stupid, Hollywood way, e.g. DiCaprio's face remains miraculously pretty, no matter how much it is slashed and burned.
On the seriously negligent casting: Any sane movie buff would balk at casting Leonardo DiCaprio as an Irish street thug. Even if he's buffed up and scarred up, it isn't him and it isn't ever going to be him. Maybe he has a range (tho Brad Pitt he is not) but it doesn't lie in that direction. Just as bad is Cameron Diaz in a role w/o a hint of humor. What a waste! Imagine her overly mobile face covered with grime and blood looking horribly distressed, over and over ad nauseum. Cripes! She isn't nearly as cute as I thot she was. Her face is sort of squashed down, her mouth is way too big. DiCaprio bores me anyway, but too bad to see a free spirit like her become an ugly Julia Roberts wanna be.