- Forum Clout
- 57,397
While the 90s gave us many absolutely classic style over substance, multi-layered, ultraviolent crime-action films with the success of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, the 00's gave us a second wave saturating the theaters with far more stylistic, far more violent, but far less substantial spiritual knock-offs. While some of these still echo in our collective psyche like Sin City, and In Bruges, others have gone mostly, if not completely forgotten, like Lucky Number Slevin, The Limey, or my personal favorite growing up, Smokin' Aces.
The movie brilliant shoves all the exposition, which if told today, would take 3 seasons of a netflix series, into the first 15 minutes, introducing us to the 12 or so main characters, giving us their motivations, and backstories, literally by telling and not showing, because this movie has no fucking time to spare on story. This is done so for the next hour and a half we can watch these people murder each other in a hotel elevator and lobby with guns, knives, and chainsaws, in a candy colored fuck fest of lower mid budget nonsense with an appropriately overly melodramatic soundtrack by Clint Mansell who was clearly still way too self involved from the success of his work on Requiem for a Dream.
Didn't enjoy it as much as I did when I was a kid, but it is still a delightful way to make an hour and 45 minutes go away. If you'd spent that time playing Mortal Kombat 9 on the Xbox 360, you'd get the same out of it, just stupid, fucked up entertainment, with no purpose other than to be fun.
4/5
The movie brilliant shoves all the exposition, which if told today, would take 3 seasons of a netflix series, into the first 15 minutes, introducing us to the 12 or so main characters, giving us their motivations, and backstories, literally by telling and not showing, because this movie has no fucking time to spare on story. This is done so for the next hour and a half we can watch these people murder each other in a hotel elevator and lobby with guns, knives, and chainsaws, in a candy colored fuck fest of lower mid budget nonsense with an appropriately overly melodramatic soundtrack by Clint Mansell who was clearly still way too self involved from the success of his work on Requiem for a Dream.
Didn't enjoy it as much as I did when I was a kid, but it is still a delightful way to make an hour and 45 minutes go away. If you'd spent that time playing Mortal Kombat 9 on the Xbox 360, you'd get the same out of it, just stupid, fucked up entertainment, with no purpose other than to be fun.
4/5
