Threat

This movie is really really violent. I was not expecting it to be quite so violent. It's not violent like an action movie though because you really hurt when you see it happening. The characters are all really interesting and well developed and that makes it all so much more painful to watch when they start killing each other. I saw the movie with my boyfriend and I didn't really want to see it but he loves the music. I think I ended up liking it more than he did. Saying like is weird because it's not the kind of movie you "like" in the way that you like maybe a comedy. I mean I was more effected by it than he was. I can't stop thinking about it so I guess that's a really good thing. Both the male leads are super hot too. Like WB hot. I have seen a lot of independent movies and usually the actors aren't much to look at well Threat gets extra points just for that haha

when Threat works it's like the second coming of Martin Scorsese. when Threat fails it's like the second coming of Abel Ferrara. luckily for me, i like Bad Lieutenant just as much as i like Mean Streets, so i have nothing to complain about. director Matt Pizzolo goes for broke on this hard-edged film about how extreme philosophies can drive ordinary people to obscene lengths. using black & white film for daytime, color for night, and interlacing animation throughout, Threat runs like a comic book gone haywire. everything is over the top, especially the philosophy: "if the suit don't see you as a threat, then you are the suit" or "how many people watched those towers burn, and were really just (expletive) angry that somebody beat them to it." brave words. it's no surprise this kind of anger would be coming direct from the streets of NY, the biggest surprise is that it's taken so long in coming.

i was lucky enough to see this film when it played in Montreal. i have seen other people cite the violence as what is so amazing or over the top about the film, but it's the character and subtlety i most enjoyed. here's a surprising example: one of the first scenes in the movie is nearly five minutes long, shot black and white in a very sparse room, with two talking heads: the main characters discussing philosophy of all things. what's so amazing about this? well the entire audience was wholly absorbed and engrossed in the scene. now that is film-making. if you can write and direct a scene where there's no action, there's not even color on the screen, and you can entertain with a philosophical discussion: then staging an exciting riot is an afterthought. i really thought the riot was just that: an afterthought to an otherwise very thoughtful and entertaining little movie.

I saw an ad in AP for this movie and was worried it was going to be like every other indie scene movie and just take people with tattoos or mohawks and put them into the same tired plot routines of every coming-of-age story for the past 50 years. After all we've been burned before by Bomb The System, Godmoney, you name it.

Threat ain't an Oscar winner but it's as hardcore a movie as there ever was. I hope these Kings Mob guys and girls don't make another movie, but not cause I think they suck but cause anything else they do is going to be a traditional movie and probably WILL suck since the whole point of Threat is that it's not a movie, it's an all out war. I don't want to see Kings Mob's version of Mallrats. Threat keeps it real.

Threat is not a perfect film. It is a flawed hodgepodge of scenes that look like in some cases they were shot months if not years apart on whatever film stocks happened to be lying around. It is probably one of the least refined, most unglossy films to be released this decade. That said, the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. If you think that a film is only revolutionary by blowing up buildings or spouting off Pennywise-lyrics as rhetoric, then this movie probably isn't for you. But, at a time when America is more polarized than its been since the Vietnam War if not the Civil War, a social critique like the one in Threat is probably more revolutionary than just about anything else on the DVD shelves today. All that said, it's pretty obvious that the film is from a neophyte film-making team and it is often too earnest (occasionally cringe-worthy). Plus it's ridiculously rough around the edges. But that's what you get when you see a guerrilla film that's been carved out of concrete. IMHO, some of the negative commentators here may have been looking for the wrong things in Threat. It is not a movie about being straightedge or being hardcore. It takes place in the hardcore scene and has characters who are straightedge, but it's a movie with complex characters who suffer for their flaws and for behaving like zealots. It's weird to see a movie with straightedge characters that isn't about being straightedge, since it is a little known subculture. But I haven't seen one ad saying "the first movie about straightedge!" so I don't think this film intends to sensationalize the culture one way or the other. This film shows characters going from being ordinary kids on the block to doing horrendous things, and I personally felt empathy for them the whole way. Threat is different from films like Menace II Society where everyone is apologetic at the end. Threat isn't about redemption, it's about accepting damnation, and that's pretty cool in this Hollywood world.