I give this film it's props that it is very well made and reasonably well acted. BUt I couldn't get past the implausibility of the whole thing.
First and foremost, a game built around the notion of "Russian Roulette" that has to fill on hour. the big problem is that if you are doing a "live" show, you run the possibility that your first contestant will be the one unlucky enough to draw the "real" bullet. Then what do you do? You have 50 minutes of show to fill and nothing to show. The corollary is that Okay, you get to the end and the first five contestants survive, which means number six has the bullet and can't possibly get the payout. He isn't going to shoot himself at that point, so it's kind of anti-climatic.
In short, you run the risk of having another version of Al Capone's Vault- Big buildup, no payoff.
second problem, almost as big. Human nature. People are going to flinch, panic, soil their underwear and do things that would otherwise not make very good television. Too much randomness. That's why "real" Reality television is actually tightly scripted and even more tightly edited.
(The only random thing is the "performance artist's" rant about female sacrifices, which were actually rare historically. Even that was predictable, since she went through with shooting herself to no effect.)
We are led to believe the shows ratings would increase while it was going on at 1 AM in the morning (unlikely) with the token Asian girl announcing each boost in ratings.
A point on race and sex. Big surprise the movies two minority (one gay) and two female contestants are the ones who survive. So we are left with the two white males, and of course, the slightly less likable of them is the one who buys it. The purpose of such a show would be it's randomness, but the guy you like the least is the guy who dies.
the Climax is that after spending two hours fighting for televised suicide, the Eva Mendes character (Mendes produced and starred in this thing, so she has no one to blame but herself) actually grows a conscience when someone dies. What did she THINK was going to happen? She is promptly shot by a bystander angry about the whole thing (motives never explained) and the show went on to be a big hit. Really?
the problem with media satire is that it has to either have some grounding in reality or it has to be so over the top to be ludicrous (like Network). This is neither.
First and foremost, a game built around the notion of "Russian Roulette" that has to fill on hour. the big problem is that if you are doing a "live" show, you run the possibility that your first contestant will be the one unlucky enough to draw the "real" bullet. Then what do you do? You have 50 minutes of show to fill and nothing to show. The corollary is that Okay, you get to the end and the first five contestants survive, which means number six has the bullet and can't possibly get the payout. He isn't going to shoot himself at that point, so it's kind of anti-climatic.
In short, you run the risk of having another version of Al Capone's Vault- Big buildup, no payoff.
second problem, almost as big. Human nature. People are going to flinch, panic, soil their underwear and do things that would otherwise not make very good television. Too much randomness. That's why "real" Reality television is actually tightly scripted and even more tightly edited.
(The only random thing is the "performance artist's" rant about female sacrifices, which were actually rare historically. Even that was predictable, since she went through with shooting herself to no effect.)
We are led to believe the shows ratings would increase while it was going on at 1 AM in the morning (unlikely) with the token Asian girl announcing each boost in ratings.
A point on race and sex. Big surprise the movies two minority (one gay) and two female contestants are the ones who survive. So we are left with the two white males, and of course, the slightly less likable of them is the one who buys it. The purpose of such a show would be it's randomness, but the guy you like the least is the guy who dies.
the Climax is that after spending two hours fighting for televised suicide, the Eva Mendes character (Mendes produced and starred in this thing, so she has no one to blame but herself) actually grows a conscience when someone dies. What did she THINK was going to happen? She is promptly shot by a bystander angry about the whole thing (motives never explained) and the show went on to be a big hit. Really?
the problem with media satire is that it has to either have some grounding in reality or it has to be so over the top to be ludicrous (like Network). This is neither.