A shocking but realistic film

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 1999)

After the opening scenes of the film, the rather limited dialogue began to put me off but when I became used to the F-word and realised that for the type of people being portrayed it was their normal language, then I stayed for the duration. Like so many banned films, one had to watch it to see why it had been so maligned.
I was not so shocked at the violence or blood, in fact the latter was not so realistic looking. The only guy I felt sad about was the poor cop who was captured and tortured by Mr Blonde. He was doomed from the start. The film had the usual messages about friendship, trust, comradeship and all the human non-virtues. In an unexpected way the violence and evil help to make portray them more vividly. Films of this sort do not make society a better place or really provide entertainment but occasionally we need them to drag us from the cosiness of our living rooms to the realities of criminal life on the streets of our cities. It goes on everywhere, in the streets of the cities, in countries, on Continents (the atrocities taking place in Kosovo make some of the scenes in this film seem like friendly games). Society needs to be shocked sometimes to bring its citizens back to reality of the human situation.