Not for squares.

50 disparate people stand in a staggered circle facing each other, on some kind of technological dais, where the floor is touch-sensitive to their presence, so they cannot move off their individual space or touch each other on pain of electrocution. Black background, like some episode of LOST IN SPACE or THE TIME TUNNEL. Every two minutes, one of them is killed via an electric jolt and dragged into the mysterious black.

Is there a point to this arbitrary wastage of human life? Is there an escape from this immobilizing trap? Is there surcease from the ongoing trauma of wondering when your time is up? Is there a jockstrap big enough to hold the balls of these filmmakers?

A feature film debut from writer-directors Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione, CIRCLE is that rare pitch that immediately inspires provocative thought: 1 location, 50 people, each dying one at a time… (Y’know, I couldn’t find the budget for CIRCLE but I’m presuming that the whole production cost less than the hair gel budget for Captain America in THE AVENGERS.)

An ingenious ensemble piece featuring all unknowns (except maybe Julie Benz, a striking hotness who was in RAMBO and SAW V, and a few That Guys), no character is safe from the fatal electric jolt. What we think may be long-term characters to hold together a throughline, or characters ripe for redemption, or just plain better actors with interesting backstories, are unceremoniously cut down, leaving us at many intervals grasping for meaning as futilely as the protagonists in the Circle.

The characters can only interact verbally, soon discovering they have minimal control over who is to die next, by manipulating their hands to move lighted floor pointers to the person of their choice. They find they cannot vote for themselves, and if more than one person gets an equal amount of death votes, the Circle then makes the final choice on who dies.

Artfully woven into the desperate dialogue are unresolved social issues like racism, age-ism, politics, adultery, motherhood, altruism, capitalism, xenophobia. The existential question that keeps arising: Who amongst us is worthy enough to be the last person standing?

It’s a well-made thought-experiment, but cannot sustain the tension for a few reasons:

1) Once you come to terms with the inevitability of your own death, and once we as the audience come to terms with the fact that there is probably no way out for any cast member, no matter how sexy or kind or redeemed or useful to society – all hope IS lost. There is no more reason to hold onto life, which, it would seem, is not precious at all, if all the struggles of all these different people from such different walks of life, all come to nought.

2) Get 50 people in a room together. See what happens. I have no faith in humankind at all, especially with wildly differing intelligence and sociological strata, as in CIRCLE’s situation. The only “faith” I have in human nature, is that if you put enough humans together in a stultifying space, soon enough they’ll turn into a clutch of idiots that don’t deserve to live. There are certain points where CIRCLE tries to emulate the discordant natter of opposing viewpoints, but it fails at conveying the cackling shout-fest, politics-fest, ethics-fest, hot-button-issue fest, racist-fest that this claustrophobic situation would devolve to within 5 minutes. Not saying there are not intelligent people among these 50, but, as in real society, the intelligentsia is drowned out by the morons (cough-Dumbo Donald supporters).

3) As soon as someone mentions “aliens” – and it turns out to be a credible assumption – you lose me at anal-probing.

CIRCLE is to be enjoyed in the moment, within its 1 hr 27 min runtime. If you take away anything from it, it’s that humans are a clutch of idiots that don’t deserve to live.

END

When sensual massages go horribly wrong.

Cinco de Pain-o.

SAW V opens with its now-characteristic gore-porn, that gives the victim a torturous choice, in this case, be sliced in half by a swinging pendulum, Edgar Allen Poe style, or stop the swing by crushing your hands to dust in vices. The victim opts to mangle his hands, as penance for his past sins – but the pendulum continues its swing and gradually slices his body in two. All through the gruesome disembowelment, the victim is screaming, “Fuck! Oh fuck!!” And the tragedy of this society is that the movie is R-rated NOT because of the gratuitous gore or the self-mutilation – but the swearing. (If only we could entrap the Gutless MPAA in one of these SAW devices. Then they could discern what is worse: crawling through razorwire or swearing while they’re doing it.)

SAW V continues exactly where SAW IV left off, so get your popcorn-fueled SAW marathon on before coming to SAW V, or you’ll be left in the dark like a woman wearing a pig-mask with her hair twisted through a vice…

When Scott Patterson realized he looked like Tim Allen, it was much too late.

Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson, on the trail of Jigsaw) shoots the innocent Angus McFadyen (who was searching for his daughter since TWO movies ago), then is assaulted by a pig-mask, and injected into unconsciousness. He attains consciousness with his head entrapped in a Perspex cube, filling with water. And there is no spiel from Jigsaw on how to escape the trap.

And that is where the movie slips up. Jigsaw’s modus operandi is ALWAYS to give his victims a choice on mutilating themselves to escape. There is no choice here – the cube starts filling up with water, and Strahm is meant to die with no means of escape. Why not then simply kill Strahm with a lethal injection – or a gun?! Why go to all this trouble if there is no option of escape, no “lesson” to be learned?

Meanwhile, Agent Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), whom we now know is working with Jigsaw (although you wouldn’t know if you didn’t popcorn the last installment), is playing the hero for the arriving police; the only one to escape the factory complex where he was “trying to save” all the other dead agents, including Rigg (who’s Rigg again? – Popcorn!).

Suddenly – Carlo Rota! I’ve loved this character actor since his down-to-earth portrayal of Brian’s boss in QUEER AS FOLK (2003). I could watch him in anything! That calming voice and demeanor. Here, he is part of a five-person menagerie of victims, all connected in devious ways, all tasked to compete with one another in a series of deadly rooms, each successive room taking them closer to freedom. This sub-plot has nothing at all to do with the main plot, except to put five people’s lives in jeopardy. Get it?

Five. 5. SAW V.

Along with Rota, as one of the five, there is brown-haired beauty Julie Benz! As luscious sweet as Rota is alpha cool! Smokin’ even without getting her gear off, although blonde suits her better. Greg Bryk, a familiar That Guy, as another victim; his final task of willfully running his hand into a buzzsaw, webbing of the fingers first, will kick you in the nuts.

When Carlo Rota realized he was in a SAW movie, it was much too late.

In his battle to stay alive, Rota bashes Bryk in the head, remarking, “Survival of the fittest.” Later, another victim (Meagan Good), who felt sorry for Bryk, bashes Rota in the head and quips, “Survival of the fittest, my ass!” Uh, you just proved he was right, dumbo!

Meanwhile, in Movie Number 1, Strahm pursues Hoffman, knowing him to be Jigsaw’s accomplice, while Hoffman sets up Strahm to look like the Jigsaw killer, while the movie flips around in space-time so much that when Jigsaw himself (Tobin Bell) turns up again and again – yes, the guy who died two movies ago – we don’t even question him doing dirty deeds any more.

Over the course of the movie, the two retained writers from SAW IV (Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan) connect SAW V to every movie in the series that preceded it; we see snippets of Danny Glover, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Donnie Wahlberg, Lyriq Bent, Athena Karkanis, Betsy Russell… and there’s Al Sapienza as police chief (forever Mikey Palmice from THE SOPRANOS!).

New director David Hackl takes the reins from Darren Lynn Bousman, and ramps the primal terrors to visceral new heights. If we enjoy this blood-gushing movie, doesn’t it say something about how damaged we truly are as a species? Doesn’t the pushing of the carnage envelope rob us gradually of more and more humanity? Maybe so. However, Jigsaw mitigates his murders with morals, telling his devotees that he is putting his victims through their tortures to purge them of sin, to teach them to “cherish their lives.” In this way, our shadowed consciences can gawk like bystanders and come away supposedly unscathed…

Have to admit, something about SAW’s twisted conundrums is compelling, even though we regularly “fall out” of the movie with the elaborateness of the torture devices, which would be impossible to construct throughout warehouses in Los Angeles without someone detecting them! How come no detectives have yet contacted the vendors that supplied all the raw materials for these clockwork death traps, to trace Jigsaw’s steps? Jigsaw calls the pendulum “inferior work” because it is made by one of his imitators – but that’s one of the most elaborate gags we’ve seen! What is he basing his criteria on? I’m sure he’ll tell us soon enough, whether he’s alive or dead.

Jigsaw, can I have a choice? Watch another SAW movie – or put my face in a blender.

END

He’s a Fighter, Not a Lover.

Remember when we were kids and the image of a sixty-year-old man was a white-haired fogey with a cane and wobbling knees, using an ear-trumpet and calling everyone “sonny”?

Sylvester Stallone is 62 years old. Black hair below the collar, stampedes like a buffalo, fires a 120-pound 50-calibre machine-gun with the kick of a Mack truck – and built like a brick shithouse freight train.

Oh, and he’s Rambo. In RAMBO.

Bemusing to think that this symbol of virile youth, synonymous with bringing down the thunder on the establishment, is now an elder statesman telling us “nothing does change.”

John Rambo is eking out a quiet life trapping snakes in Thailand when stupid white missionaries (led by Paul Schulze and Julie Benz) cajole him into boating them upriver into strife-torn Burma. It is quite obvious Rambo is convinced into this deluded venture by the blondness of Benz, but in his stunted emotional state, cannot express it in any way other than to FIGHT for her. Schulze asks her why she keeps talking to him. Well, maybe cos he’s built like a brick shithouse and can do her for hours, unlike you, you Missionary-Position Missionary.

Against Rambo’s advice, they go, of course. Imprisoned by Burmese military – of course. Guess who comes to the rescue? Of course.

Plot is as simple and illogical as the RAMBO oeuvre we’ve come to love and hate, but there is a disturbing added element to the 2000’s Johnny Rambo.

Poffbo

Rambo, instead of being recalcitrant about his SAS killing prowess (as he was in RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and RAMBO III) now embraces it and admits to himself he enjoys being a war machine. While his initial hesitance to take the missionaries into hell prompts a belief that Poor Peacenik Rambo has been dragged into someone else’s war yet again, Rambo actually narrates that his nature is to seek out conflict because that is how he is built; to seek a Warrior’s death – as opposed to fading far from the fray. Due to our inculcation that Rambo is a “hero” and heroes shouldn’t enjoy war, it takes a long time to sink in that this Rambo fella is actually as shallow as we’ve always joked about him over the last 25 years!

It’s safe to say we all know Rambo, if not the man himself, then at least the character, the icon; as a touchstone, a cultural reference that has insinuated itself into our vernacular. It is hard to believe that before 1982’s FIRST BLOOD, there must have been another reference for uber-tough guys who could burn you down in a heartbeat and take on anyone or anything; maybe it was Tarzan or Samson – whoever it was, that persona was effectively sidelined by Rambo, for the simple fact that media promulgation at this point in history is such a gluttonous bloat.

But the “ideal” of Rambo has always been someone who doesn’t take shit (as in FIRST BLOOD), or someone who, against all odds, pulls through with his manly might (RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II), or just plain body oil extravaganza (RAMBO III). But in RAMBO, we find out he is not a nice person. A woman’s pink bits might twitch for this man, but only as a locomotive love-machine for a one-night slam, not as someone to “love” or raise kids with, or even as a provider or boyfriend showpiece. He is pure – but that is not a compliment. After all those years in obscure jungles trying to “find himself,” in RAMBO, he does – the “ideal” of Rambo is revealed as pure war and death.

As writer-director, Mr. Stallone is fully to blame for the absolutely nonsensical plot: he pounds it into us how ruthless, godless and inhumane the Burma military is; scenes of military grunts sadistically making prisoners run across rice paddies where they’ve arbitrarily thrown mines, betting on who will make it across or be blown to bits; we witness a commander (Maung Maung Khin – a real-life survivor of the Burmese military) slaughtering a village, “If you ask the Rebels for help, I will cut out your tongues! If you go against me, I will feed you your intestines!”; he shows us brutal beheadings and arm-loppings and rapes… and then expects us to swallow that this same bloodthirsty military would decimate a village, killing even the dogs – and let all the White American Missionaries live, taking them prisoner – even though none of them is important in the LEAST politically, diplomatically or morally. And then to further insult us when Rambo liberates the white prisoners and the whole Burmese army chases them for the purpose of… uh, recapturing them and penning them next to pigs again, I guess – (?) We can rest assured not one of the guys playing Burmese officers went up to director Stallone and said, “Uh, Mr. Lambo, what my motivation?”

Among the White Americans is Sarah (Benz), a clean-smelling, smooth, flat-bellied, luscious blond. If we – as normal red-blooded guys, leading normal sex lives with girlfriends, wives, mistresses and the odd groupie – are still thinking of touching the White Chick in all her woman-places, think of what should be going through the heads of the depraved Burmese army swine. Hardened killer soldiers (who rape and kill their countryfolk as easy as breathing) confronted with a HOT BLONDE never lay a finger on her for all the days she is in her pig-pen prison!

You lost me at the corner of Amish and Eunuch, when you played the White Hollywood Actor card.

The commander constantly paces and gives Sarah contemptuous meaningful looks through the bamboo bars – but what is he doing? Working up the nerve to ask her for a date? She is not a dignitary or diplomat; not the least bit important – she is a missionary, an expendable nobody, so there is absolutely no tactical, political or moral reason not to rape her continually until the end credits roll. This negligence is almost as infuriating as the film-makers’ faux-concern over Burma’s real life genocide plight.

So Rambo and a clutch of mercenaries infiltrate the jungle prison and liberate ALL the White prisoners and as many Burmese women as they can (who are busy getting gang-raped – unlike their White American counterpart).

Somewhere along the way, Rambo gets to philosophize, “Live for nothing or die for something.” Embarrassed? I know I am. Ironic that these words come from such a self-admitted misanthrope, who proves his inherent distaste for Mankind in a climactic shootout scene that makes THE WILD BUNCH look like HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL.

When Rambo plants a claymore mine on a defunct WWII Tall Boy bomb, the explosion is like Oppenheimer’s atomic mushroom cloud – Rambo had reached his apex; as Robert Oppenheimer said when he saw his first atomic bomb tested: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” (The test director replied to Oppenheimer’s poetic citing of the Bhagavad Gita with a more realistic claim: “Now we are all sons of bitches.”)

Then the shooting starts. Rambo’s tree-limb-thewed arms entwined in loving ecstasy with a 50-calibre machine gun, bodies splattering and smattering, ripping torsos from midriffs, limbs from torsos, heads severed from spinal cords, nonstop cascade of thudda-thudda-thudda bullets slamming, searing, bombarding, intestines, gushing gouts of arterial red fountains, foliage decimated, vehicles sprayed vermillion with carnage; shards of flesh dangling, pieces of shattered bone and brain smudging the camera lens and on and on and on and on and on and on… and on.

It is amazing how much startling violence this movie is chocked with and still gets away with an R rating. The film-makers were actually shocked that they avoided an NC-17 with such realistic gore, but they forget the key ingredient in the MPAA’s hypocritical criteria: you can have as much graphic murder as you want – let’s see those shredded skulls and shinbones sticking out of flesh and heads on spikes – just don’t touch the White Woman’s Vagina or we’ll ban you sick horrible perverts!

On the DVD Extras, Stallone regrets deleting a “preachy” scene: in that direct soldier’s way of mumbling half-intelligibly, he speaks Truth: “War is in this country’s blood and peace is an accident… but it’s okay cos you’re killing for your country. But it ain’t your country who’s asking – it’s the guys up top who want it. Old men start it. Young men fight it. Nobody wins. Everybody in the middle dies…”

All the Missionaries’ platitudes about helping people and believing in something other than yourself were all proven horseshit, as their presence did NOT help, but only exacerbated the military’s anger, spurring them into a fiercer rage to go Sam Peckinpah on them. When Rambo warned them they wouldn’t change anything – he was right! If they had kept their noses out of Burma (or Myanmar, as the junta have renamed it), LESS people would have died.

Just because these Missionaries have “good intentions” doesn’t mean they have any sense; trying to breach a political problem from exactly the wrong end of the mule. Instead of infiltrating government or congress in order to stick their unwelcome noses into the internal problems of a foreign country, they try to curb the Burmese-Karen civil war by praising Jesus and bringing penicillin to a handful of people who are going to die in the next raid.

When Rambo gets on the 50-calibre, joyously slicing military bodies in half, at least the mercs behave like mercs and fight back ferociously; they don’t sit by idly or cry like lady-boys like most B-Listers in these movies – Stallone (as director/writer) allowing them their own Rambo-moments in the sun.

After clinging to that 50-calibre way past the time any mortal could possibly wield it without their flesh being shucked off their bones, Rambo at last brings peace to Burma by killing everyone. With his shirt ON the whole time!

Well, he did win Viet Nam in 1985, beat Communism in ’88. How hard could Burma be? He surveys the scene with a heavy heart as the music swells, then walks off, as char-blackened and sweaty as one of Bruce Willis’s t-shirts in DIE HARD. His next assignment, we presume, must be Darfur.

And just when we think it’s safe to go trekking in the jungle without being cut down by howling junta crossfire, we hear RAMBO V is in pre-production. As Stallone says at the conclusion of FIRST BLOOD: “Nothing is over! Nothing! You don’t just turn it off! Heroes ououdaw wohhaah red ’58 Chevy convertible gonna cruise till the tires fall off aoohawou this kid comes up wid a shoeshine box ouuwahou houwanhaaarr.”

More poetry from the Destroyer of Worlds…

END