If this film's flaws consisted only of the hilariously shlocky script and the irritatingly self-conscious camera-work, I would not have minded it so much--heck, I would simply have forgotten about it, and moved on. But something else really bothered me about this film: it was cruel.
The screenwriter forces the following formula down our throats: if someone suffers from violent childhood trauma, he will, of necessity, become psychotic and murderous as an adult. There really is no helping him: you might as well "put him out of his misery," to quote the film. The movie's only point and direction was to establish this formula.
This is not only a totally immoral position for the screenwriter to take, it is also a childish and naive world-view. The film's assumption that anyone with severe childhood trauma will become a monster would necessitate that there are only as many people out there recovering from childhood trauma as there are monsters out there harming people. And unless one believes there are hundreds of millions of murderous monsters in the world, then that must mean there aren't very many people with severe childhood trauma--only the occasional Ryan, whose personal situation is rare. This is stupidly wishful thinking, which cruelly congratulates those (like the character Barrett) with cleaner childhoods.
On the plus side, the "I love this land" line was a hoot.
The screenwriter forces the following formula down our throats: if someone suffers from violent childhood trauma, he will, of necessity, become psychotic and murderous as an adult. There really is no helping him: you might as well "put him out of his misery," to quote the film. The movie's only point and direction was to establish this formula.
This is not only a totally immoral position for the screenwriter to take, it is also a childish and naive world-view. The film's assumption that anyone with severe childhood trauma will become a monster would necessitate that there are only as many people out there recovering from childhood trauma as there are monsters out there harming people. And unless one believes there are hundreds of millions of murderous monsters in the world, then that must mean there aren't very many people with severe childhood trauma--only the occasional Ryan, whose personal situation is rare. This is stupidly wishful thinking, which cruelly congratulates those (like the character Barrett) with cleaner childhoods.
On the plus side, the "I love this land" line was a hoot.