Rating of
3.5/4
Backwards
Owtkast - wrote on 08/26/08
I'm basically amazed at the reviewers of this movie who were shocked by the language and violence, and for that reason hated it. What did you think you were getting with this movie? The language is integral to the movie's setting, plot and, yes, to it's morality (more on this later). The violence is at times just gratuitous, I will agree, but that's part of the draw of this film: The lack of inhibition of the violent characters here is meant to draw out the darkest of the film's humor! "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration?" Samuel L Jackson's character asks a college-age actor after arbitrarily shooting one of his friends. The idea here is that the mean-spiritedness and absolutism of Jackson's character is so over-the-top to be ridiculous, and thus, funny (at least to those who don't take a movie to be a reflection of how people are SUPPOSED to act). The same goes for the sensational scenes of Uma Thruman overdosing on heroin and, of course, "the Gimp" scene. None of the violent characters in this movie come out unscathed except one -- and he repents his ways. Back to the morality of the film. The ending scene is of two men, one who has chosen to quit "the life" and one who has chosen to continue. Their individual outcomes really determine the movie's theme. One could go so far as to say this movie leaves off in its narrative at that particular point to allow that we all still have a choice to make. One could also say that it encourages us to mek the moral choice, since the character that doesn't ends up paying with his life. If you can get past the violence a swearing (and remember that this is a movie), this is fantastic experience.
