Paint by numbers suspense and the end of hope.

Rating: 1/10 (23 March 2005)

I'm sure something good came out of the making of this movie. Perhaps somebody, who might otherwise have been struggling for the rent, was employed and made an honest dollar out of this production. Perhaps a cat, that would otherwise have been run over, lived beneath the wheels of one of the Winnebago's and got a saucer of milk every once in a while. Perhaps a fly, who would have died, hungry and alone, found a crumb of cheese, the leftovers from some extra's sandwich.
I have never written a review before. The swill we're fed these days arrives with such regularity that it passes through my system long before my taste buds register the will to care. However, every now and then, I raise my weary lids and quietly, secretly, dare to anticipate. Admittedly, each one of these moments of youthful innocence is crushed with such an inevitability it says something about my short term memory (a different story altogether) that I continue to succumb to the hack Hollywood illusionists. But I do. They got me again. Firstly it was the trailer. Rule no.1 If the trailer is good, the film ain't. I ignored Rule no.1. Then the reviews. Luminaries like "Fight Club" and "Memento". "Echoes of Hitchcock, Lynch, Kafka and Dostoyevsky" Todd McCarthy, Variety. Todd, are you kidding me? But wait. Once again I forget. The propaganda machine spreads its insidious tentacles far and wide. I must be stupid. But perhaps it's just because i'm powerless. Like a prisoner condemned to his dying day, I trick myself into following the slightest flickers of light. Hoping that perhaps they might warm my fingertips as I fester in my light-less cell. What is there otherwise? I forget because it means there is a future tending away from the current order. A future in which these films don't exist.
Thank you Machinist. Thank you for finally, crushing those lasts flutters of hope. The machinery is in place. Ignorance won't save me. I need to accept.
I guess this is just the way of it these days.
p.s Go see this film. It's enlightening.