Gruesome Violence Ruins What Could Have Been A Great Movie!

Rating: 1/10 (12 February 2007)

After the movie was over I felt outraged and shocked. The violence in this film is so morbid and intense it was overwhelming. In this movie you will literally learn the how to torture someone with the correct tools. You will see so many people have their brains blown out, most at point blank range, you will lose count. You will see the brutal murder of a father & son, a kindly teenage girl, a benevolent doctor, a man with a handicap, not to mention numerous young men. We get to see a rivers of blood while a women bleeds to death from childbirth. A man have his leg amputated due to gangrene. Another man (who is merely human, in case your wondering) is brutally stabbed in the back, heart and face, and he gets up a few minutes later as if he just stepped on a tack. (Some guys have all the luck!) We even get to see him stitch his face back together again in graphic detail. (Sorry, I can't tell you more, at this point I was looking away).
The world of "fantasy", on the other hand, is virtually devoid of all violence. This ancient Pagan world is, for the most part, quite loving and sane. A very sad commentary on Franco Spain during the early the 1940's. Unfortunately this magnificent "fantasy" world makes up less than a 1/4 of the movie, while the constant brutal violence and turmoil of the "real" world makes up the rest.
Here are some of my conclusions: If you bring a child or an emotionally fragile person to this particular movie they may end up needing the services of a psychiatrist. THIS MOVIE IS RATED R FOR A GOOD REASON - EXTREME VIOLENCE! The critics who raved about how great this movie is should be on the front line covering the war in Iraq. Pan's Labyrinth is a fantastic example of lazy film-making. It's cheaper to show flying brain goo than it is to create a magnificent fantasy world in all its complex beauty. Many of today's filmmakers and screenwriters think the general movie going public are idiots - nothing can possibly be left to the imagination. We need to be shown everything like a five year old child. The general public is divided in two very broad groups: One that either enjoys and/or could care less about watching intense violence and suffering - and those who find it troubling or annoying and do not enjoy watching people being maimed and murdered.
The movie ratings system in this country is a joke, and an extreme example of hypocrisy. When Al Gore's brilliant documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," received an "R" rating for an under five-second scene of a Katrina victim's corpse floating on his stomach, and a movie like Pan's Labyrinth gets the same exact rating - then it's time to radically change the movie rating system in the USA, pronto!! Perhaps, instead of an "R" rating we could have two new ratings: XV for extreme violence and XN for extreme nudity & sexual situations. P13 would become MV for moderate violence & MS for modest nudity and sexual situations. Meaningless PG would become G. Then those of us who don't want to read opinionated and biased reviews picking apart a film before watching it could get an honest indication of how much sex & violence one could expect. ( By the way, there is absolutely ZERO nudity or sexual situations in Pan's Labyrinth! I guess sickening violence is more profitable!) I know we don't live in enlightened times, and present day film-making is a graphic indicator of this unfortunate fact of life! But I have learned a valuable lesson - Expect an "R" to mean gruesome violence except if you are doing a documentary on Global Warming!