Man, Get Off His Jock...

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2003)

Yeah, sure, it's powerful. Yes, it's brilliantly directed. Yes, someone somehow made a watchable movie out of a Hubert Selby Jr. book. But take a step back and realize that "powerful" doesn't automatically equate with "great."
Not to knock anyone, but to knock them anyways, Darren Aronofsky may have all the talent in the world, but he still has yet to deliver with a complete, fully-realized film. For all the bleakness, for all the evocative hopelessness, the man still fails to grasp the most important thing a filmmaker needs to pull off: well-drawn, deeply felt characters. As game as the efforts of his actors are - and obviously Jennifer Connelly deserves a ton of credit for the chances she took - only Ellen Burstyn's performance suggests anything remotely like a real person, and Jared Leto's Harry is a cipher (in a synthetic, ineffective way). And anyone who wants to argue that you don't need great characters to make great films, even a technician like Kubrick makes his performances paramount.
So yeah, it is an amazing visual experience. The fast-cutting works in a way that those who decry our MTV-blind generation never imagined it could. But "Pi" ripped off Shinya Tsukamoto's "Tetsuo" endlessly, and this one hollows you out with its sheer manipulative force, rather than the strength of the drama on screen.
If you want bleak, hopeless cinema where the manipulator gets great performances from his cast, check out: "Nil By Mouth," "Naked," "Darling," "The War Zone," "The Dreamlife of Angels," "Rosetta," or "Tetsuo"
This is the Hollywood version.