Tattoos, broken cookirs, 8.3 stars

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2002)

**possible spoilers**
This movie is about reality, memory, cruelty, tattoos, damage, time, dangling clues, making sense of it all, and taking useful notes. It's about the ungraceful way so many lives unravel past points of no return.

Things happen as we age. We crumble a bit at the edges, and sometimes we break off in huge chunks beyond repair. This is the story of a real broken cookie named Lenny Shelby.
Lenny doesn't look broken. He's got the pretty face, nice car, fancy suit. but it is hard to fathom how he is not dead or institutionalized, poor chap.

I watched this film twice. It's twice as cruel the second time. Though the spit is hard to swallow, this is a kick-ass film. It got me thinking from so many angles. Why didn't Lenny put dates and times on his notes? IMDB users rank it #10 in the top 250. Part of that high rank is that this is a secret tattoo cult film, like Cape Fear. Ball point pen ink and a hot needle {{ shivers! }} .