All the Rage

It's no accident that posters of Natural Born Killers and Reservoir Dogs decorate the walls of the video rental store. It's no accident that Gary Sinise looked strikingly similar to Bill Gates. It's no accident that Jeff Daniels complains about how much he hated a certain film. ("The plot was ridiculous. Get this: two thieves-- Hunnybunny and Pumpkin, a hitman eating a Hawaiian Burger while he's about to kill people, --I didn't buy it" he mutters.) ...and it's certainly no accident that the opening titles closely resemble those of another socially satiric commentary: Dr. Strangelove.

In a world hyper-saturated with media and mass mayhem, it's certainly no accident that a film like It's the Rage would hit the film scene with a piercing look at America's obsession with the second amendment. Without any regard for 'realism'-- the video clerk replies to Jeff Daniels' criticism with: "It's a movie, it doesn't have to make sense, I found that out"-- ITR follows a group of people through their control-obsessed lives as they single-handedly use and abuse each other. The handgun is the most common link, but there are others. Money, fidelity, television, theft, and isolation also fill the otherwise vacant lives of our nine characters.

The box looks like Magnolia, but what's inside is a very clear and scathing attack on Americans and their firearm addiction. Made in Canada by a first-time director, (and very skillfully at that) it's most directly a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later look at Wayne LaPeirre and his legacy of legal weapons.

Tolka's advice: watch this one with your favorite die hard Republican friend, but do wear a bullet-proof-vest for the heated discussion to follow.

Excellent acting, sly intertwining of modern characters, and escalating suspense make this movie intriguing and very watchable, despite the sophomoric and "in-your-face" anti-gun agenda that is as subtle as a lead balloon.

This is Mr.Sterns debut as a movie director. With such a wonderful cast you just can't go wrong. This movie is about, well...GUNS. It is a satirical look at guns in western society and it's ill effects. This movie will have you laughing, but thinking as well. Jeff Daniels and Joan Allen are both wonderful and show their range as great actors. The entire cast really gets into the movie, but it would be hard to explain a plot, due to the fact the movie really tells the intermixed story or several people, from different parts of our society.

To be taken seriously only as political satire. Quite humorous and edgy, with a sharp script, but spotty continuity in the narrative. Almost more a cartoon than a good story.

None of the characters are believable, which is OK, as they seem to be distillations of types. All of the men in this film are horrible--I wouldn't want a friend or a relative among them. Women are treated as victims, more or less, what spare representation there is of women, though both Joan Allen and Anna Paquin are wonderful in these highly stylized roles.

Jeff Daniels's performance, as are those of most of the other men, are masterpieces of underacting. Gary Sinise and Giovanni Ribisi are given grand opportunities to chew up the scenery, which one may have every expectation either will do, literally, at any moment.

It seems to me this is also less about guns than it is about how guns are a horrible and all too real manifestation of those things--far more terrible and dark--that may have become by now an inalterable part of the American (that is, the U.S. American) character. Some other themes, besides casual (and not so casual) violence--twisted attitudes toward sexuality, the vagaries of the over-hot infotech culture, and our inability to perceive our own psychological deficiencies--are not well integrated.

Aside from the fact that this movie was obviously gun control propaganda, you just don't care about any of the characters. By the time I got to the end of the movie, I was wishing one of these pathetic characters would just go postal and shoot everyone to put me out of my misery. I can deal with propaganda in the name of good theater, but this is far from it. Prepare to snooze!!