DVD It's the Rage

The "ensemble" cast has many fine, fine actors, all of whom probably thought that by making this movie, the world would be a better place and they could pick up a paycheck at the same time. Oh well.

Ribisi is hilarious as the meth-junkie with paranoid schizophrenia. His scene in the shooting range is one of the most amusing things I've ever seen. His little kleptomaniac whore of a sister was also really funny, but I recommend seeing Reese Witherspoon in FREEWAY. Also, the scene in the bar where everyone goes for their gun at once was absolutely hilarious! If only they all shot each other, the credits would have rolled, we would have satisfylingly hit rewind. Alas.

Jeff Daniels is funny as the psychopathic white-bred suburban slimeball. Many of his lines were really sharp, and since we didn't care about his dead business partner, why should we? Gary Sinise is a great actor who is once again unfortunately cast, this time as the mentally imbalanced and paranoid recluse billionaire. Gary Schwimmer, ala FRIENDS, plays a gay guy with all the brilliance that cliche can deliver. THIS character suffers from manic depression. There is also a former assistant of the paranoid billionaire who works in a video store and suffers from romantic delusions. We just KNOW he's not fit for survival in THIS ugly, ugly world.

To all of these loopy, unintentionally comic parts we have Joan Allen as the "straightman." She goes through the film having bad day after bad day. As if people weren't awful BEFORE they invented guns. One of the prerequisites of inventing guns in the first place is awfulness, thus the supposed MORAL of this tale is missing the point.

This movie has many problems: superficial characters, goofy script, "missed points", blathering pretentiousness, inane coincidences, unintentional self-parody, etcetera.

What are we to morally conclude from IT'S THE RAGE? Not that society would be better off without guns. Certainly not that guns CAUSE rage in society. Rather, we can draw the lesson from this movie a point that is actually pretty obvious and uncontroversial: psychopaths, manic depressives, paranoid schizophrenics, kleptomaniac whoring minors, and insane billionaires ought not to have guns....well duh. IT'S THE RAGE wants to be anti-gun, yet its case for solving the symptoms fails. It does --sorta-- make the case that we really need to deal with the disease.

The film, what with being coined as an anti-gun satire or commentary didn't really hit a chord with this viewer. But never the less it did have a strong plot.

I patcularly liked Gary Sinies's character complaining about a common problem in todays society - too much information. Also the special effects in his billionaires house's many TV Screens were great and hi-tech.

There was a couple of times I laughed during this movie btw.