Exploitative, cynical, mindless, and above all miscategorised

Rating: 1/10 (31 January 2016)

Awful. But I'm happy to concede that there are plenty of folks out there who want to escape with just the kind of strong feelings this work will conjour.
It's just a pity it had to happen in my living room, and the people to blame for that are the Western European censors, who presumably are working to definite guidelines in rating this film suitable for medium-sized teenagers to watch. Why is this? Why is this gratuitous violence, that has no redeeming features at all, certainly no artistic merit, rated suitable to stream into living rooms full of ordinary young people? I can perhaps understand a 15 rating in a cinema, because the well-run cinemas I know are not lax enough to allow smaller adolescents in to this, but to rate this a 15 for home use is to confuse it with gentle, memorable and even great works that don't get a 12 for one difficult scene or one awkward adult plot line. This, though is R for every scene, even the one or two where Reeves just drives.
I do understand why people want to make films like this. There is money in them. I do occasionally watch them myself, although I didn't make it all the way through this one, because the plot was so flimsy it just got blown away along with the first wave of carnage, and you knew there would be no more story after, what: 20 minutes? (does that amount to a spoiler, telling you that there's nothing to spoil?) I limped on and dipped in and out after that, so at least I'm confident that I'm being fair.
If there is any idea that arises (difficult to credit, really) it is this. People do things to us that instil strong feelings of revenge. But we cross the line if we allow ourselves to act instinctively in response. The message I would urge upon both the film-maker and his audience: he shouldn't have allowed himself to succumb and actually make the nasty little film, and you should have ignored his plea to help him recoup his investment. The alternative is nothing but dead puppies, some of them human.