From the same country that brought you legalized torture...

Rating: 1/10 (11 March 2008)

I had just started watching this on DVD when I very nearly lost my dinner after just two acts of egregious violence in the first minutes of the film. And this was only the prelude. I'm very sorry that the Academy felt it had to crown this kind of demented bloodbath with a prize. This is just more of the same old snuff porn that has been making the rounds of Hollywood since at least "The Godfather", except now it's being directed by the usually incomprehensible and slow-as-molasses Coen Brothers, who seem to have decided to exchange art for profit, this time around, by following the psychopathic-killer-on-a-rampage gravy train all the way to the bank and giving the dumbed-down US public what they really crave: a virtual murder spree à la Grand Theft Auto with lots of comic book horror. Not that you couldn't see that coming all the way back with "Blood Simple", of course... In short, this is just the sort of sadistic entertainment Nazis must have craved after a hard day's work at Dachau or Büchenwald. So why did we fight and win that war exactly?