reVIEW (12)
PAPARAZZI

This review (a slightly altered version of the review entitled “Reality Through A Cracked Lens”) is being resurrected for no other reason than what I feel is my civic duty to warn the innocent of particularly bad movies they should stay away from…

After the harrowing The Passion of the Christ (and before the harrowing double-whammy of the run-in with the law and the overblown chase film that was Apocalypto), Mel Gibson returned to the secular world as one of the producers of Paul Abascal‘s Paparazzi, a revenge fantasy for those weighted down by the terrible burden of popularity.

Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser) is the up-and-coming star of Adrenaline Force, whose sequel is even now being filmed. But Laramie and his family quickly become the targets of a gang of paparazzi led by Tom Sizemore, who make the star’s life a living hell of popping flashbulbs and covertly-taken pictures. This harassment culminates in a car accident which injures Laramie’s wife (Robin Tunney), and puts his son in a coma. Unable to convince the police that the paparazzi caused the accident in the first place, fate conspires to put Laramie in a position to pass judgment over one of the guilty party. And thus begins his vendetta to punish those who have done harm to his family, while a detective, played by Dennis Farina, begins to grow suspicious of the action star.

Now, the inherent problem of the revenge fantasy as entertainment is the brand of morality it presents to the audience, given that these are films where individuals take matters into their own hands, and a body count is racked up, in the name of justice.
Laramie goes off the deep end and engages the sleazy paparazzi in a dangerous war to exact revenge. Okay. He does it since his family was hurt. We know this sort of thing happens.
The problem presents itself when there is no apparent consequence for the actions Laramie takes. There doesn’t even seem to be any psychological toll on him, for actions that include, among other things, premeditated murder. It seems to be just another script he’s acting out. Just another role he’s taken on: the alpha male defending his brood from predators.

And the paparazzi here seem like nothing more than a pack of ravening wolves, salivating for that next compromising photo, systematically destroying lives and reputations by distorting the truth to sell tabloids. Now, though it is possible that every single paparazzi in the world is irredeemable scum, it’s also entirely possible that they’re not. But as it is, in the film, it’s pretty black and white. These “photo journalists” are bad, and show no remorse whatsoever for the reprehensible acts they take to make a buck. So, in that sense, the film is definitely slanted. In that sense, there could possibly be a distortion of truth here as well; perhaps not on the level of the tabloids making up stories from thin air and suggestive photos, but a distortion nonetheless.
And though of course, granted this is a work of fiction, we must acknowledge that on a certain level, the revenge fantasy is a vicarious thrill for the audience. Every goon punched, every murderer shot, is a surrogate for every boss/employee/co-worker/random stranger we’ve ever had the irrational urge to hurt and maim. The revenge fantasy is exactly that: a fantasy that allows us to enact bloody, Technicolor surround sound rampages of righteous fury, while enabling us to go home with our hands and consciences spotless.

But when a revenge fantasy is presented to us as a real world scenario, as opposed to the hyperreal falsity of a Kill Bill, I feel there should be a responsibility to portray the consequences of the action on-screen. If the ostensible “good guy” is allowed to take the law into his own hands, and then allowed to get away with it without any scars, what does that say to us, the audience?
And don’t get me wrong. I’d hate to play the Morality Police. I just try to take any film on the ground upon which it stands. This is no hyperreal, ultraviolent tale that is so over the top, no one could ever mistake it for “reality.” Paparazzi is the story of a man, a husband and a father, pushed too far, who acts outside of the laws of man and God, to redress the wrongs done to him and his family.
What is doubly odd for me is the fact that Mel Gibson produced the film. For someone who faced so much furor over The Passion of the Christ because of his faith to back a film with a script such as this strikes me as strange.

But let’s leave that tack for awhile. Barring any sort of morality or message, the storytelling itself is just plain faulty. Laramie doesn’t get away because he’s particularly smart or has thought his way ten steps ahead of the paparazzi and the police; it just turns out that way. And quite suddenly, whatever suspicions the detective may have had just conveniently evaporate for no apparent reason. Plus, the cameos of certain Hollywood personalities are so gratuitous, they’re irritating. And I won’t even touch the Lady Di parallels.

Ultimately, Paparazzi is the worst sort of film to me: the kind that doesn’t seem to have consequences, where characters are allowed to act without any repercussions; the kind of film that seems to mirror not reality, but rather the false portrait of it Hollywood seems to favor. A world where we all have the impunity to do whatever we want, because in the end, just before the credits roll, everyone’s happy and smiling, safe and content in the knowledge that they have done right by acting in their own self-interest.
This is the world as seen through the lens of Paparazzi. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the world I choose to live in.

(Paparazzi OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (11) 
SAW

With Saw IV set to open this Halloween, I thought it a good idea to resurrect this review, which was previously published in 2004 under the title, “The Big Blood-Drenched Picture.”

jigsaw n : a machine saw with a narrow vertically reciprocating blade for cutting curved and irregular lines or ornamental patterns in openwork
vt : to arrange or place in an intricate or interlocking way in the manner of the parts of a jigsaw puzzle
adj : suggesting a jigsaw puzzle or its separate pieces

James Wan’s Saw is the cinematic equivalent of a bear trap (to borrow an analogy from the film); once it begins, those rusty, razor-toothed jaws snap shut, and there’s little else you can do but sit riveted to your seat till the bitter, bloody end.
What if you woke up to find yourself chained to a pipe in a decrepit bathroom, without knowing who put you there, or why?
From this seed, the twisted and gnarled script of Saw—written by Leigh Whannell, who plays Adam in the film—grows.
And it turns out to be one of the best, most intense, and most involving English-language horror films made in quite a while.

An excellent marriage of content and technique, Wan’s directing style, modern and yet not too MTV for its own good, complements the non-linear script written by Whannell to a tight tee. In much the same way that the David Goyer-written script for Alex Proyas’ Dark City emulated the structure of a spiral (a central image of the film), Whannell’s script is a jigsaw puzzle, referring to a central story element of Saw. The plot is structured in such a way that events and revelations are parceled out to us like puzzle pieces, for us to feverishly plant in place, as we attempt to make out the big picture. And, deviously, Whannell and Wan give us pieces that can fit into their slot in more than one way, so our perception of the big picture can change in an instant.

Now, a short lesson: the difference between a plot twist, and a plot flip.
A plot twist is a sudden curveball in the story that you don’t see coming: the apparent good guy who turns out to be a baddie; the seemingly innocuous neighbor who turns out to be a government agent. Plot twists in recent films are (spoilers!!!): exactly who the sacrifice is in Darkness, bringing to light just how wise the titular evil really is, or the fact that there is no Totenkopf in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, merely the video ghost of Sir Lawrence Olivier playing God-in-absentia, as his clockwork creation continues to run through its programmed agenda. There is also the last-second revelation that Beatrix’s child is still alive, at the end of Kill Bill Volume One.
A plot flip is a single event or revelation in the story which results in a total re-evaluation of everything that came before it, a pivot point in the story which requires you to see the whole tale from a different perspective. A very popular plot flip is the ending of The Sixth Sense, which forces you to see the whole film in an entirely different light. There is also Neo’s awakening from The Matrix into the real world (though this occurs early on in the film’s running time), or the pair of flips in Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters).

The wonderful thing about Saw is that it has twists and it has flips. Usually, a film will either have a bunch of twists, or one flip; it’s rare that a film will contain both. (The Village is another recent film that displays its fair share of flips and twists.)
In Saw, the twists and flips are sudden and savage, malevolent Jack in the Boxes that spring out with a demonic howl, leaving in their wake a stunned sense of revelation, as we stand in ever-widening pools of blood, for a few precious moments too shocked to move, lest another come leaping out of the darkness (which it sometimes does).

Now, two films Saw has been compared to since its release are The Blair Witch Project and Se7en, Project merely because of Saw’s low production cost (reportedly less than $10 million), Se7en because of its mood and content.
Se7en seems the more valid of the two comparisons, though I will say this: Saw displays genuine malignancy and unease, as opposed to the faux dress-me-up-in-moody-dimly-lit sequences of MTV malevolence that characterizes Se7en.*
While The Blair Witch Project is the resounding triumph of marketing over content, Se7en is the victory of style over substance.
Saw, for better or worse, is the real thing; it’s the Se7en I wish Se7en had been.

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival last January to sold-out screenings, Saw is currently enjoying box-office success in the US. Clearly, Saw has hit a nerve, and audiences are twitching and screaming and grimacing, fingers slipping on blood-drenched pieces, as they try desperately to put the puzzle together before the clock runs out.

* Just to be clear: I'm not saying Se7en is a bad film. Not at all.
But I strongly feel that whatever's good about it, is all thanks to David Fincher. What I'm saying is, remove Fincher's style from the equation, and there doesn't seem to be too much in Andrew Kevin Walker's script to differentiate it significantly from any other random religion-obsessed serial killer thriller.
Meanwhile, I feel that there's enough in Whannell's script that, even if it had been helmed by a director less inventive than Wan, that the resultant film would have still been an effective one. 

Parting shot: Saw is intense horror, and quite possibly not to everyone’s tastes. A good barometer would be Se7en: if you found that agreeable to your cinematic palette, chances are, you’ll appreciate Saw.

(Saw OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)