Rampage

I've read the criticisms of Uwe Boll, heck I've seen House of the Dead and it was brutally bad. This movie, on the other hand, was all too good. Uwe Boll shoots and scores on this movie.

I'm not a camera guru, but the movie is shot with a home video feel to it. The picture was a touch grainy and not all that crisp like you'd expect from a feature film. That didn't detract from the movie at all.

Rampage is, unfortunately, a very familiar story in this day and age. From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook and, as of a few weeks ago, Isla Vista, and as of a few days ago, Seattle. A young man, just out of high school, is fed up with his life and people in general. So, he deals with it the way some young people have decided to do in recent history; he goes on a shooting spree.

The movie does a brilliant job to tear at you much like the movie Falling Down. In other words, in no way would the average person condone random killings, but you are shown the frustrating events that occur to the young man to put him in a violent frame of mind. Ultimately, you can draw your own conclusions about the young man. Maybe some are enthralled by his actions while I know many would be absolutely mortified by his actions. The excellence of this movie was in the developing of this young man/monster.

The ratings would be much higher, if this movie had another directors name on it. But since it's a Boll-Movie, it can't be good, right? Rampage is basically a movie about a guy on a killing spree, but Boll really managed to add depth to it. Believe it or not: this is a pretty clever flick. There is no black and white, no good or bad. Society is just f****d up in general and everybody seems to deal with that differently.

So it's not a nihilistic vision of our society. It's not dragging you down like a depressing Larry Clark- or Lars Von Trier-flick. It's not torture porn and it's not pseudo-artsy. It's simply a good movie, with great actors and a surprising twist in the end.

The editing and the cinematography were a bit wonky, though.

I rented Rampage last night. I didn't know anything about the film but the cover looked good enough. When I saw Uwe Boll's name at the opening credits I exclaimed: "Oh no! I have just ruined my evening!!!" But there was nothing interesting on TV so I went ahead and watched it. It turned out to be one of the most astonishingly pleasant surprises I've ever had as far as films are concerned. It was an Uwe Boll film and it wasn't a piece of garbage. I was really avoiding his films in the past for reasons I don't have to explain. I never thought I'd ever write any reviews about films but Mr Boll made a film that I enjoyed watching. That is something. I don't want to dissect the film and analyse the acting, effects, camera work and all that. All I know is that I didn't regret spending neither the money renting it nor the time watching it. Will Mr Boll make films in the future that will give you some fun instead of a nervous breakdown? We shall see.

Uwe Boll is compared to Ed Wood and I think it is justified, he has a lot of very annoying habits as a director, his aesthetic sense and/or his skills at cutting movies are off.

And I think these bad habits are still present in "Rampage" (for example, in my opinion the movie would look better and have more tension without all the foreshadowing in the beginning).

However Boll managed to minimize his annoying directorial habits to an acceptable level and create a good movie with its own style. The movie shocks with its nihilistic sensibility and I think it is a biggest sign of the theme being treated in a non-stereotypical way.

This movie has a very non-pretentious style, but actually I think it treats the subject matter of mass murder more non-stereotypically then a more "highbrow" movie like "Elephant".

The actors are good, especially Brendan Fletcher who plays the everyman psycho protagonists, reminds me of young Christian Slater.

I recommend this movie and will check out other higher-rated Boll movies,

The only movie I had seen from Boll was House Of The Dead. It was a lot of fun because it was so bad. I read reviews of other movies he made, and I suspect they weren't much better. I was infuriated with what he did with the Alone In The Dark franchise, with guns and bimbo scientist and all.

I went to see Rampage (at the L'Etrange Festival) with a smirk on my face. I missed the 15 first minutes and I'm almost glad I did: the lousy messages, the jump cuts, the ad lib dialogue were about to get me out of here. But the actors weren't bad, things kept moving, so I played along.

Then started the said "rampage". There is not much to tell about it. It feels like Boll wanted to stick the nose of GTA players into their own *bip*, asking "So you thinks that's funny? See what it's like, is that so much fun anymore?" The movie gets better every minute. By the end of it I also wondered if the beginning was playing on the fact that we expect something stupid, illogical and aimless from his movies.

The logic is not without faults, but nothing that couldn't be discussed, the humour is great, scarce and surprisingly witty, overall, for me it was a success. If you get a chance to watch it, stick with it, at the end you might find yourself surprised at how it got there, from where it started.

As a side comment I would like to add that Mr Boll is a very nice person, on the first day of the festival he stood in the middle of the multiplex for hours (without boxing gloves) just to talk with people. I'm familiar with festivals and you don't see a lot of directors doing that.