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There's something wonderful about a "revenge" film. Everyone wakes up in the morning believing he/she is the star of "the movie," and that anyone who interferes with one's own personal agenda is in some way the enemy. Revenge plot films work particularly well if a person has low self-esteem. Rather than fighting back in the moment, the "hero" draws upon built-up inner anxiety to engage in a single act of power in an attempt to restore equilibrium. Quite naturally, in the "real world" this type of revenge seldom relieves the tension because life is not a movie; after the revenge is enacted the actions taken have their own consequences. A good revenge flick helps people ignore this bitter pill. In the movies the end credits roll and all responsibility resolved.
"Swimming With Sharks" is advertised as a comedy, no doubt an act on the part of the producers to figure out just how to sell this oddity. It's dark, but it isn't dark comedy ("Company Of Men" and the works of Todd Solondz come much closer). Parts of the film are so brutal they pre-date the current "torture-porn" genre everyone is so obsessed with ("Saw", "Hostel"). There are some laughs. There are laughs in "Saving Private Ryan" too, but it isn't labeled comedy.
The intrinsic problem with this film is that it hasn't earned its revenge case. It is ostensibly about a young man who is abused by his boss and eventually takes his boss hostage to "pay him back" for all the mistreatment. The hero (aptly named "Guy") is an "everyman" so vague we know literally nothing about him...what does he do with his spare time? Does he have friends/family? How did he get where he is? What are his interests (this becomes a running motif through the film, no doubt inspired by the film's author's own struggle..."What do you want?", the answer to which we are denied by a vague, cheat of an ending)? It's very difficult to care for such a character, even if acted well (even Tom Hanks becomes a creep in the wrong roll, such as "Punchline"). Kevin Spacey as the boss, "Buddy," is supposed to be a monster but he's too charismatic as an actor. The best laughs came when he abused his assistant--he seemed almost as surprised as the audience probably is at what Guy will endure. When Kevin's character is being tortured, the view taken suddenly becomes empathy for him. Guy is suddenly filmed as a leering monster without rationality. At this point any message the author had has been lost; there's no "hero" in this film, ergo, no reason to care at all.
It's not a stretch to assume this story is based on the author's own troubled career in the film business. I worked for a similar boss and can vouch that it's not that far-fetched. I had similar wish-fulfillment fantasies at that time and thought that I was justified. I thought you could win over the most beautiful woman in the story (actually, the ONLY woman--there seem to be all of about four people in the universe of this film) just by being your eager, naive self, that eagerness won accolades and that a boss abused you because he was a mean person. Time and tide have revealed the truth that most "monsters" are really just the demons of an individual's personal psyche and resentment is usually based in the self. As the film points out, if Guy was so unhappy he only had to leave. The film doesn't offer any denouement at all, "surprise" ending notwithstanding. We still know nothing about the protagonists, we can't even be sure anything they said was based in fact and everyone magically gets to have his cake and eat it too. In short, there was no point to this story at all other than to point out that (shock!) the film business can be pretty brutal.
There are plenty of good films that tell solid and satisfying revenge-style fantasies, both the feel-good variety ("9-to5," "Working Girl," "The Devil Wears Prada") and not so much ("War Of The Roses", the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes"). This isn't one of them--despite a fun turn by Benicio Del Toro in the Emily Blunt role from "Prada" and some interesting work by Spacey and Michelle Forbes, this is a frustrating, mean, confused and slightly dull creation of self- indulgence from a director who has, one hopes, "worked it all out" by now...


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