DIRECTED BY Harold Ramis
STARRING John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt
US 2005 88 mins.
SAW 2 (no stars)
DIRECTED BY Darren Lynn Bousman
STARRING Donnie Wahlberg, Franky G, Glenn Plummer
US 2005 92 mins.
Say what you like about the multiplex – that it treats films as commodities, turns the cinema into a supermarket – but it has at least two advantages over the picture houses of old. One is the (lack of) intermission, letting movies play out in their natural rhythms – and the other is a greater respect for ratings. Generally speaking, you won’t find unaccompanied minors in ‘18’-rated screenings, at least not as many as before. (Of course our law forbids any minors in ‘18’ shows, even if accompanied by their parents; but let’s not get into that.) This is better all round – better, I assume, for the kids’ morals, and definitely better for adults who don’t have to watch grown-up films with kids getting bored or making inappropriate comments.
The other side of the coin is that ‘18’-rated films are rare at the cinema. There’s been a gradual infantilisation – at least in Cyprus – with the more adult fare relegated to DVD and film societies; yet The Ice Harvest has been rated ‘18’, mostly I suspect for sexual content though it’s hardly obscene. The scenes in a strip-club show a fair bit of skin (which is as it should be), and there’s a rather explicit photo that briefly becomes a bone of contention. There’s also quite a high body count, but what can you expect when a lawyer (John Cusack) and a small-time pornographer (Billy Bob Thornton) join forces to carry out “the perfect crime”?
Needless to say, the crime goes wrong, which is partly bad luck and partly human error; as in every good ‘film noir’ – and this is very much a ‘neo-noir’, with Connie Nielsen as a late-in-the-game femme fatale – the biggest mistake you can make is trusting other people, and Cusack’s nervous-rabbit quality has seldom been better used. Of course we know things will go wrong – and the film knows we know, hence its mordant humour and ironic Christmas setting. Like last year’s Bad Santa (also starring Thornton), it subscribes to the notion that “only morons are nice at Christmas”; the setting is a wintry city over a single icy night, and the opening credits (scored to the sound of a doleful “Little Drummer Boy”) show lonely streets and fading decorations, the creepy desolation of a town emptied by Christmas.
The Ice Harvest is one of those films whose main pleasure isn’t in the plot – though it’s reassuring to know that money will always corrupt, and thieves will end up at each other’s throats – but the atmosphere, dialogue and performances. Cusack is wary, jumpy, introverted; Thornton is sharper and smoother – and Oliver Platt is right at the other extreme with one of the broadest, funniest drunk acts in many years. The film is shot through with malice (Thornton’s hated wife, who’s “on a Subway diet”) but also the rueful resignation of late-night bars and drinking alone. “It’s against my religion to give out personal advice,” Nielsen tells our hero, “but you should either sober up or get real drunk”. It’s about as close as the film gets to affection.
Some will say it’s ‘slow’, and maybe it is. It’s a deadpan joke, muted and sardonic. “In this country, all that’s left for men is money and pussy,” says someone, and it’s partly a case of drunken self-pity but also kind of true: the men we see are all stumbling around, mired in doubt and uncertainty. Cusack tells the story of his father and uncle, who were very different: his dad was respectable and uptight, his uncle a drunkard and whoremonger. His dad died suddenly one day at age 54, his uncle died the day after. The moral of the story? “It is futile to regret. You do one thing, you do another … So what? Same result.” Only those over 18 will appreciate the wisdom of that statement.
Saw 2 is also rated ‘18’, and with good reason. Clearly, under-18s shouldn’t watch this sick, brutish movie – which doesn’t mean that over-18s should. Marginally more coherent than the incompetent Saw, it also ups the gross-out factor, going for the Final Destination strategy of elaborate deaths. The most spectacular is a girl who falls into a pit full of syringes, emerging with needles sticking out of her face and limbs. The most convoluted is a guillotine-like contraption round a character’s neck, the blades timed to close (and decapitate him) unless he can find a key which has been sewn into his face, forcing him to tear out his own skin with a Stanley knife. “There will be blood,” cackles the serial-killer behind it all. “Oh yes … There will be blood”.
The whole thing is nonsense, but what makes it offensive nonsense is (a) the deification of the serial-killer, and (b) the utter disregard for plausible plotting. “He’s testing us,” says someone of the Hannibal Lecter-like psycho who likes to play games with his victims – like a god “testing” his flock. The games are supposed to be Darwinian, ensuring the “survival of the fittest”, but in fact anyone who takes the initiative gets killed and the challenges are impossible anyway; only if you “play by the rules” do you stand a chance of survival. The film’s message is authoritarian, its view of people depressing. The characters are fools, bickering endlessly and making no useful attempt to extricate themselves.
The original Saw had two men chained in a room, told they could only get out if one killed the other – and I knew it was going to be dumb when the chap under death sentence threw a handsaw to his prospective killer without having first cut off his own chains. The sequel has six people trapped in a house, knowing they’re being poisoned by a slow-acting nerve gas – and I knew it was going to be dumb when they’re told they can find the antidote if they work out what they have in common, and MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THIS RIDDLE! Mostly they yell, curse, break down doors and rush around frantically, till someone eventually wonders what they can possibly have in common – by which time the film is half-over. The Silence of the Lambs showed a film can be unpleasant, even sadistic, and still compelling. The Ice Harvest confirms you can be nasty and cynical and still make a great movie. Saw 2 is just inept and sensationalist.
There’s more I could mention, like a twist which (I’m almost sure) cheats by ‘repeating’ a line of dialogue we never actually heard before – but why bother? Saw 2 isn’t a movie, it’s a product aimed at gorehounds and pissed-up students on a Friday night. (“Of course I’ve been drunk! I spent three years in college!” says someone, and you can almost hear the roar of approval in common-rooms across the land, once the film comes out on DVD.) Maybe we should change the ratings system from age-based to IQ-based – so something like Saw 2 would be an ‘80’ rather than ‘18’, excluding anyone of average or above-average intelligence. Much more useful than the current system, and fairer too; just because they’re kids doesn’t mean they can’t be stupid.
