The trouble is, he doesn't know what number to call. So he does the next best thing and calls his wife in California. The sight of Wahlberg trying to carry on a benign domestic conversation while people are down the hallway preparing to torture him is one of the more jolting, darkly hilarious film sequences in years. There's a frantic emotionalism to it that's almost been snuffed out of American movies, and Russell deserves high praise for letting the ironic sparks fly at such an exhilarating rate. Russell gets carried away with trick shots at times, but cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel saturates the color whenever the story moves into the hot desert sun.
Light glares into the lens and all the hues seem blanketed with a grayish tint.
When Jonze is trying to outrun an incoming attack helicopter, the grains of sand that kick up from the machine-gun blasts seem to hang in the air for an instant before they fall to the ground. It's one of the best films of 1999. But then he undermines the attempt by staging some of the killings in a hot-dog style that might get audiences cheering. People are shot at point-blank range, blood spews, heads explode, a cow explodes. There's brief nudity and bad language.