Dull, Bland, Slow, Badly acted and poor direction

Rating: 2/10 (9 May 2006)

I'd heard numerous things about this film before I watched it mainly focusing on the violence and gore, but the other being Quentin Tarentinos involvement. So I watched this film expecting a slick, well produced and fast moving film. However! What I saw was a slow bogged down movie with very poor representation of any kind of truth - i.e. Amsterdam - I lived there for a few years and know it extremely well and I've never seen such a Red Light area and more to the point since when have the Dutch spoken German!?! This turning it into a typical Hollywood 'we don't care if it's accurate depiction or not film'. The first hour of this film is supposed to be trying to build a story however the quick cutting between leaving the 'Hostel' (Hostels in Amsterdam normally have a name!) to Coffeeshop to Disco to appearing another room with the Alex character is very disjointed. Oh on another note no hostel in Amsterdam ever have Curfews they fully well understand why people go Amsterdam ('the party capital of Europe') - just another point that makes the film so unbelievable.
That said the general arrogance of the American in Europe is capture well enough! Something if you live in Amsterdam and see day in day out you'd understand that comment.
Back to the film. So once the 'action' has moved from 'Amsterdam' to the train on it way to Slovakia - couldn't they be bothered to stop in Germany or the Czech Republic which they would have had to cross before reach Slovakia? The scene in the train carriage was toe curling cringe worthy - who told these 'actors' they could act I don't know!
They then appear at the 'Hostel' and more wooden acting and poor direction we suffer the embarrassment of the sex scenes . . at this point I was ready reach for the stop button on the DVD player . . but I suffered on.
So the last 30 minutes the movies actually picks up and bit and story regarding an organisation which people pay to torture and kill people. Plot idea - good but very badly executed! The gore isn't as bad as people have made out and why people don't pass out from pain and stop bleeding (even after having two fingers cut off) is something else. The finale is pretty poor also you left not really knowing anything about what actually happened or any background.
So in short save yourself an hour and just watch the last 30 minutes that's the interesting part of this film (and you wouldn't miss anything). It isn't a thriller, it's not a horror film, it's just a mess! It's the kind of film I'd expect from an American who has never left America in there life.