There are certain things I generally avoid when choosing movies.
Sometimes I say “Oh that will be too violent, too disturbing etc.”, so I end up watching something else, perhaps a crappy romantic-comedy-happy-buddy-predictable and relatively “safe” flick. Certainly it ties back to my drive-thru double feature trauma from sitting through “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Phantasm” when I was merely 7. I remember screaming that I wanted to go home and no matter how tight I closed my eyes I couldn’t block out the noises coming from the speaker placed precariously in the rolled down window.
Today i saw a movie i knew relatively nothing about other than the theater description:
And I’ll be honest; I didn’t really read it all the way through or think too hard about it.
There weren’t really a lot of other choices out there it seemed and it sounded like action and intrigue. I like intrigue.
“The mysterious and charismatic Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is a driver for one of London's most notorious organized crime families of Eastern European origin. The family itself is part of the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Headed by Semyon, the family's fortunes are tested by Semyon's volatile son and enforcer, Kirill, who is more tightly bound to Nikolai than to his own father. But Nikolai's carefully maintained existence is jarred once he crosses paths at Christmastime with Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital. Anna is deeply affected by the desperate situation of a young teenager who dies while giving birth to a baby. The girl's personal diary also survives her; it is written in Russian, and Anna seeks answers in it. By delving into the diary, Anna has accidentally unleashed the full fury of the Vory. With Semyon and Kirill closing ranks and Anna pressing her inquiries, Nikolai unexpectedly finds his loyalties divided.”
What I failed to notice was the reason for the rating:
“BRUTAL and BLOODY violence, some GRAPHIC sexuality, language and nudity”
Yeh, I missed that.
But hey, I am no longer 7, (I am several times that in fact) and one thing that I have acquired over the years is desensitization to violent film imagery as well as the ability to leave a film if I don’t want to watch it. I know they are actors, the contents are fictitious, the blood is fake, I will never be inspired to replicate these acts in any way (unless i had my own camera, fake blood and dramatic cast frightening others certainly with much more comedic flair and no actual brutalness!
But as a life-long learner, every moment is one to draw insight and wisdom from, and this is yet another example.
What I know now- or at least better understand after watching this movie:
1. The sound of fingers being removed from a dead body to avoid positive IDs
2. What that hand looks like once the 5 tips are removed and it has been floating in h2o
3. What it would look like if someone hand fought opponents to the death while naked
4. What a knife through the eye would look like
5. The distinction between throat slicing cuts done clumsy and awkward, versus the swift clean slice
And that is only a partial list!
The shock and awe perverse joke of extremes.
Seriously, in the end everyone was stupid.
The "truth" was the buried subplot of a young girl’s tragic existence revealed occasionally through brief journal excerpts. Her story left mostly unexplored or on the cutting room floor. One of my students this summer had a line that captured it well, “who cares what a fourteen year old girl has to say.” But i transgress into the heavy... and this is just another movie that was sick, twisted, and disturbing in all the ways that the genre generally is, with extra attention to detail.
But did you see the way he got that guy in the eye?! OMG!
Come on! It was “Aragorn” naked kicking butt and getting his butt kicked. (Don’t worry, I covered my eyes slightly!)
Granted, I would not have chosen to see Viggo in the buff in my top 100, if there was some sort of poll on that kind of thing ahead of time), but how often is the male physique in it’s entirety shown in R rated movies? I think “laws” about that kind of thing exist, or at least it seems that way.
However, all things considered, next time I might choose a comedy.
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