The director works the audience as if he himself is a drug dealer supplying what they crave.

Rating: 6/10 (30 June 2002)

It's surprising to see how many people are being duped by the director of this pretentiously and gratuitously violent film. What the director offers are quick fixes of rapid fire imagery and viciously cut scenes without any need or opportunity for the audience to think hard or deeply about anything. Take,for example, his treatment of the character played by Jennifer Connelly. How is his degradation of that character any different than her debasement by the other men who exploit her for their cruel pleasure? The director consistently keeps his view of her "objective" in the literal sense of presenting her as an object -- upon which he projects his own fantasies of how an addicted woman would sell herself. Why doesn't he allow her to have any inner, believable life that could make her more real and make her conflicts more intense? (His objectification of her is so extensive that it feels at the end as if he is one of the men zeroing in on her pain to feed their horrifying pleasure.) Ellen B's character is more fully drawn, but even then, why does the director need multiple shots of electric shock treatment when one shot would show what she is feeling? The answer is that the director knows the fix his audience is seeking. We say we're appalled, but we can't stop watching what the slick photography and postmodern soundtrack turn into the very kind of media-induced high that his movie supposedly is critiquing. Wake up, audiences, and try to think for yourselves. The best directors want us to do that; the worst are afraid of what will happen if we dare to do so.