Z/Web

This is a low budget film from the 60’s that has gained a cult rep. The acting is poor (only one professional actor in the group), but the story’s interesting, though the title’s misleading. The title made me think this was a serial killer type story, but the lead bad guy’s a kid, a twenty-year-old punk who has no respect for life and murders indiscriminately. He and his girlfriend take hostage a group of schoolteachers on their way to a baseball game when they had car trouble and stopped in a small deserted town where the murder and his girl were hiding out. The kid shoots one of the teachers for fun after making him get on his knees and beg for his life. The other two know they’ll be next, and they stall for time trying to fix the car and plot their escape. Interesting concept, claustrophobic atmosphere, tight direction, but mostly notable as this was the first film for Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (though he’s credited as William). The lead bad guy, played by the producer’s son who wanted him to be a star, is pathetically bad (he later dropped out of acting saying his father had pushed him into it), but a few others aren’t too bad. Still, while “shocking” at the time of its release, it’s mild like a TV movie for today.

Director: Robert Altman

While I’m a huge Altman fan, this is unwatchable. The premise has promise: a group of upperclass people gather in 1930’s England for a weekend shooting party and one of them is murdered. We get to see a lot of the relationship between the servants and their employers. Unfortunately, the first twenty minutes is spent introducing characters one by one as they arrive, and if you’re like me, after ten minutes you already have no idea who is who. There are like 50 main characters and each has one or two servants. I was completely lost from the start. Then the film meanders as we see the people in various scenes, learn the relationships, but basically we care for none of these people, there are so many it’s impossible to remember who’s who (I tended to them of them by actor names instead of characters). This continues for over an hour, as the “exciting” murder doesn’t take place until more than halfway through this long film! By that time I was so bored I didn’t care any more. I fell asleep and woke up during the credits. Even though I had no idea who had committed the murder, I was so put off by the film’s glacial pace and arrogant, empty characters that I didn’t even care! I had interest in rewinding and watching the ending I’d missed. I could barely figure out who had been killed let alone stir up any compassion for him or any of the others. And this was one of the best films of 2001 (it was nominated for Best Picture)? What a lot of rot! I’ve lost all respect for the Academy. This is just a PBS period piece with a lot of top actors that’s like some sort of literary health food concoction — “it tastes terrible, but eat it, it’s good for you.” I’ll bet none of the academy members who voted for it had even seen it. If it had been shortened to 30 minutes it might have been interesting, but at over two hours it’s just boredom on a disc. My vote for one of the worst films of 2001.