As others have said, you can watch this movie on several levels.
If you take it at face value, it's not so bad. The first forty minutes are engaging, the middle is dragged out, and the end, while predictable, is suitably grotesque and unsettling. You'll be left with the impression that you watched a so-so thriller with vague political undertones and a weirdly racist finale.
If you watch it from the "facing your fears" perspective it holds up decently. A successful, white, middle class liberal does indeed fear these things: That his wife will leave him, that a tiny scratch will blossom into a horrible infection, that society is secretly brutalizing minorities or that a minority will directly brutalize him.
Unfortunately, presenting these fears is not the same thing as discussing them, and the viewer is left with the feeling that they were cheated. In the end, this movie has nothing to say about the topics it brings up.
Finally if you watch it from the "George as America" perspective that the director apparently intended, as per the special features on the disc, it's downright terrible.
From that perspective, the film appears to be saying that America is victimized by black people, America is victimized by Iran, but luckily Iran is incompetent, and hot nurses love America... and trees. These are, in fact, the exact opposites of the messages the director intended (except maybe the nurse thing). As is evident in his on-disc interview, what he meant to say amounts to "America sucks and is mean," not "poor America, brutalized by the world," which is what came across. This total lack of control over his own symbolism makes the message unintelligible without a running commentary, and therefore a complete failure.
So we're left with a pseudo-deep movie (read: BS philosophy meets jumbled politics) that fails on every level of viewing except the least ambitious - a hospital thriller - where it manages to be "okay."
Do I even need to say: Not Recommended?
If you take it at face value, it's not so bad. The first forty minutes are engaging, the middle is dragged out, and the end, while predictable, is suitably grotesque and unsettling. You'll be left with the impression that you watched a so-so thriller with vague political undertones and a weirdly racist finale.
If you watch it from the "facing your fears" perspective it holds up decently. A successful, white, middle class liberal does indeed fear these things: That his wife will leave him, that a tiny scratch will blossom into a horrible infection, that society is secretly brutalizing minorities or that a minority will directly brutalize him.
Unfortunately, presenting these fears is not the same thing as discussing them, and the viewer is left with the feeling that they were cheated. In the end, this movie has nothing to say about the topics it brings up.
Finally if you watch it from the "George as America" perspective that the director apparently intended, as per the special features on the disc, it's downright terrible.
From that perspective, the film appears to be saying that America is victimized by black people, America is victimized by Iran, but luckily Iran is incompetent, and hot nurses love America... and trees. These are, in fact, the exact opposites of the messages the director intended (except maybe the nurse thing). As is evident in his on-disc interview, what he meant to say amounts to "America sucks and is mean," not "poor America, brutalized by the world," which is what came across. This total lack of control over his own symbolism makes the message unintelligible without a running commentary, and therefore a complete failure.
So we're left with a pseudo-deep movie (read: BS philosophy meets jumbled politics) that fails on every level of viewing except the least ambitious - a hospital thriller - where it manages to be "okay."
Do I even need to say: Not Recommended?